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CONGREGATIONAL 
ADMINISTRATION 



The Carew Lectures before the Hartford 

Theological Seminary 

1908-1909 



BY CHARLES SUMNER NASH 

Professor of Homilerics and Pastoral Theology in the 
Pacific Theological Seminary 




BOSTON 
THE PILGRIM PRESS 

NEW YORK CHICAGO 

1909 



*< 



Copyright, igog, 
BY Charles Sumner Nash 



©CL A 2563 16 * 



PREFACE 

The following lectures, published substantially 
as they were delivered, attempt to state sym- 
pathetically and constructively the principles of 
the Congregational polity with reference to pres- 
ent phases and problems. Attention is not turned 
upon the past. The Scriptural deduction of 
our principles and the story of our historic de- 
velopment have been given repeatedly. These 
lectures, while consistent with the past, desire to 
serve immediate conditions and emergencies in our 
church life. We are in no little confusion, such 
as always attends progress. There are earnest 
inquiries and disagreements among us respecting 
methods of procedure. Reorganizations in the 
interest of closer ranks and united action are pro- 
ceeding in many parts of the land, and as well in 
oversea Congregationalism. We are feeling our 
way toward the better thing. That there is a 
better thing and that we can and must achieve it 
large numbers of us are convinced. The Con- 
gregational churches in large majority seem in- 
tent upon becoming the Congregational Church. 

Our problem is that of an efficient democracy, 
how to organize an effective union without over- 
riding or fettering personal and local liberty; or, 
in the words of Mr. John Fiske, "the task of 
combining indestructible union of the whole with 
indestructible life in the parts." 1 It is, moreover, 
1 Beginnings of New England, p. 48. 



how to do this in our Congregational way, how 
to make our own peculiar contribution to modern 
development in both Church and State. With 
local independence we are perfectly familiar; of 
union of the whole we are still not a little igno- 
rant and afraid. Upon that union, however, in 
some wise form, we are resolved, answering the 
charge of inefficiency and defeat, and responding 
to the call of modern organized life to unflagging 
zeal and grander enterprise. The mission of 
Congregationalism — whether in other hands or 
ours — to human progress is still great and long. 
The service of our own body of churches is be- 
lieved to be far from complete. Our augmented 
resources, personal and material, have overtaxed 
the old methods of service, and are waiting half 
inactive to be marshaled afresh. The new ways, 
so far from being less than denominational, are 
taking interdenominational, national and inter- 
national proportions. Many-voiced and sharp is 
the challenge to enlarged administration for 
mightier movements afield. 

Charles Sumner Nash. 
Berkeley, California, August i, 1909. 



CONTENTS 

Lecture Page 

L Essential Congregationalism i 

II. Ministerial Leadership 35 

III. Forms of Local Fellowship 71 

IV. State Unification ioi 

V. National Unity 129 

VI. Congregationalism and Church 

Union 155 



TO MY WIFE 



LECTURE I 
ESSENTIAL CONGREGATIONALISM 



CONGREGATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 

I 

ESSENTIAL CONGREGATIONALISM 

The Congregational polity ranks with the 
Presbyterian, the Episcopalian and the Papal 
polities as one of the historic forms of church 
organization. It is found in principle and illus- 
tration in the New Testament. Framed and 
developed in the last three hundred years, it has 
already made great history. Brought to these 
shores by the Pilgrims, it gave creative spirit and 
form to this nation; a form remaining essen- 
tially unaltered, a spirit unsubdued by corruption. 

From early years this polity has been carried 
beyond the circle of churches which originated 
it. Since Roger Williams the other congregational 
Congregational Baptists have Denominati <> ns 
become a multitude. Using essentially this order 
there are also Unitarians, Disciples, Christians, 
Plymouth Brethren and others, until the Con- 
gregational polity now covers more than forty 
per cent, of the American Protestant churches. 
The several regiments show minor differences; 
the main principles everywhere distinguish the 
polity. Doubtless we Congregationalists have 
special proprietary rights therein. We should 
show best its characteristic spirit. Dr. Williston 
Walker has well said, "The body known as the 

[3 3 



Congregational 'Administration 

Congregational churches has a distinct unity and 
history. It represents something more than a 
form of church government. . . . The Con- 
gregational churches constitute a distinct reli- 
gious whole — as marked in its characteristics 
as any religious denomination in America/' l 
Yet we cannot, nor would we, hinder others from 
developing the polity into efficiency superior to 
our own. And we must be quick to learn from 
any competent instructors. 

These lectures will discuss the Congregational 
polity with reference to our own body. They 
The congregational will not return to the field of 
polity To-Day New T estament study. From 

that source have been drawn often enough the 
form and warrant of our order. Nor shall we 
tarry in our three centuries of Congregational 
history. Glorious indeed it is, and worthy of 
all attention and labor. But these lectures are 
engaged upon the present day with a forward 
look. The taking of such modern limits should 
require no justification. Mr. Heermance is right, 
in his book on "Democracy in the Church/' the 
most significant recent presentation of our polity, 
when he says, "The Christian Church must be 
free at any period to adapt the fundamental prin- 
ciples which it derives from Christ to the exigen- 
cies of its life. . . . We shall insist in the 
name of the churches on absolute freedom to ap- 
ply fundamental principles directly to present 
1 Congregationalists, pp. 427, 428. 

[4] - 



Essential Congregationalism 

conditions, whatever may have been the usage 
of the fathers." l 

There is abundant reason for attention to the 
present with reference to the future. The "Chris- 
tian World" of London compared a congregational 
unfavorably our International Consciousness 
Congregational Council in Edinburgh with the 
Pan- Anglican Congress held about the same time 
in London. It criticized the Edinburgh program 
as engaged too little with the present and future, 
adding, "Far too much time is taken up with in- 
quiries into the title deeds of Congregationalism 
and what Congregationalism has done in the past. 
The burning questions are: What is Congrega- 
tionalism doing to-day, and, What is it going to 
do in the future?" If that were the only voice 
of the kind, it might be ignored. But the same 
cry comes up from all quarters of the Congrega- 
tional world. There is much inquiry, much sug- 
gestion, much perplexity, much strong purpose. 
The National Council in its Cleveland meeting 
made a list of recommendations to the churches 
which have engaged earnest attention throughout 
the land. Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, 
Connecticut, New York, Ohio, Illinois, Michi- 
gan, Wisconsin, Iowa, South Dakota, Washing- 
ton, Northern and Southern California and other 
states have taken action in line therewith. The 
New England Congress is well forward in the 
advance. The South has joined the march. 
1 Democracy in the Church, pp. 2, 3. 

[5] 



Congregational Administration 

The Pacific Coast has attained an active self- 
consciousness. The present is a most promising 
hour by reason of our general concern and 
endeavor. 

There is also much to make the present hour 
one of unusual opportunity for our polity in gen- 
congregationai eral, for any body of churches or- 
opportunity ganized under it, and in particular 

for ourselves. We properly rejoice in our sim- 
plicity and adaptability, our breadth of sympathy, 
our freedom of thought, creed, speech and action. 
These qualities supply individual strength, but 
sometimes at a cost of corporate weakness. They 
have won many to our ranks, but have likewise 
spoiled us of multitudes who have easily slipped 
away into other connections. These qualities are 
now at a premium in our modern life. The new 
day has come forward to meet our fitness. 

Furthermore, our polity furnishes one of the 
greatest principles for social and ecclesiastical or- 
Democratic Tendency ganization, viz., personal and 
m other Polities j oca ] auton o m y, freedom and 

self-direction for the individual and the local 
group. This must be one of the corner-stones 
of the ultimate polity, as of perfected human life 
in all departments. It is interesting to observe 
how the other great polities have developed mod- 
ernly in this direction of freedom. Under the 
Presbyterian order both Presbyterian and Meth- 
odist churches have secured an unprecedented 
measure of self-control. The Methodist bishop 

[61 



Essential Congregationalism 

is a superintendent of work, not a lord of life, 
while the presiding elder has just been given the 
more suitable title of district superintendent. 
The Episcopalian churches are supervised with- 
out coercion, and enjoy much latitude of thought 
and creed as well as much free variety in active 
service. And even Rome has upon her hands 
some hardly manageable affairs, such as the 
French government, the Modernist movement, 
the American nation. This mere mention must 
suffice for the fact that the more highly organ- 
ized polities have been tending our way in this 
central matter of human liberty. We who were 
free-born can watch with equanimity their pur- 
chases of freedom. 

Important for us are also current developments 
toward direct democracy beyond the domain of 

religion. The new State of Okla- Direct Democracy 

homa has adopted a most demo- in the state 
cratic constitution. In Oregon great issues have 
been passed upon at the polls in state election, 
and the choice of United States Senator deter- 
mined by popular vote. Direct primaries have 
come or are at hand in most states. New York's 
experience in the late campaign was characterized 
as the awakening of a great state. In that cam- 
paign the appeal all over the land was more than 
ever to the thinking man, presenting solid mate- 
rials for reflection and decision. In politics, in- 
dustry, education, and indeed in all social depart- 
ments, the same movement toward enlightened 

[7] 



Congregational Administration 

participation is pronounced. In so far as this 
is the day of resurgent democracy, when the peo- 
ple reassert ultimate authority to delegate power 
and to withdraw it, when they insist upon re- 
turning to direct initiative in many things large 
and small, the churches that are constituted upon 
these very principles of individual intelligence, 
popular initiative and inalienable authority must 
realize a fresh opportunity. 

Along with this movement back toward direct 
democracy has gone another tendency, viz., to- 
organized ward stronger union. It is perhaps 
Democracy truer to sa y t hat the democratic move- 
ment has gone beyond individualism and direct 
democracy, and is driving hard into organized 
democracy. And by as much as our modern day 
has achieved stronger combination and more 
united action than ever before, our free 
churches must learn the ways of organized 
democracy. This is no time for the free- 
churchman to swing off alone and strike for 
Christ and humanity when and where he 
pleases. In state, in labor, in religion, we 
have reached glorious manhood and splendid 
group consciousness ; so far we have restored the 
conditions and personal power of the New 
England town meeting or the New Testament 
churches; but we have also learned to marshal 
these "bayonets that think" into regiments and 
brigades and national armies and even interna- 
tional armaments. The men are free, the groups 

[8] 



Essential Congregationalism 

are independent in their local life, but they form 
of their own will a closer and mightier force than 
was ever driven together and wielded by coercive 
authority. It is this last step into administrative 
union that we Congregationalists need to take. 
We have the elements and resources in ample 
measure — strong personality, churches, associa- 
tions, councils, conferences, national societies, 
educational institutions, National Council — all 
these afire with high spirit and possessing a con- 
stituency which holds great material resources. 
Wherever our machinery is not at any moment 
productive, it can readily be made so. The equip- 
ment is magnificent. It only needs to be set to- 
gether into an effective array, wherein the total 
power can be driven upon one inclusive purpose. 
The future belongs, not to unordered individual- 
ism, not to authoritative compulsion, but to the 
voluntary administrative union of self-realized 
manhood, every man a king. 

The administrative question of every hour for 
any polity, whether in Church or in State, and 
for any organized body under any pol- Problem of 
ity, is the question of efficiency and re- Efficienc y 
suits. We must answer for deeds. The Church 
is means, not end. We must ever ask, How may 
we do our full part in the world's work? This 
is the inquiry of these lectures. The question 
whether we Congregationalists are doing our full 
part is not up; we lament that we are not, and 
the lamentation is no less than national. The 

[9] 



Congregational Administration 

question is, How to do our part? Says one 
writer, "It is only by covering the meanness of 
our performances with the magnificence of our 
principles that we can hide from ourselves the ex- 
traordinary inefficiency of our present methods, 
judged as a method of conserving, continuing and 
extending the life of Christian communities." * 
Difference of opinion must be admitted upon 
what constitutes our Congregational part, how 
great it is, what results to aim at and count satis- 
factory. But most of us are not content to be a 
loose aggregation of churches, pleased to exem- 
plify individualism, to diffuse an atmosphere of 
freedom, to show the organized modern world 
how little can now be done separately or how 
much can still be done separately, and to enjoy a 
quiet brotherhood of spiritual communion. We 
believe in more definite duty, more concrete and 
ponderable results. We hear the cry of souls lost 
through the interstices of unorganized search. 
We confess the obligation of united labor. We 
know that six thousand churches properly arrayed 
are able to produce enormous results, and we 
know that our six thousand churches are far 
short of that great measure. In that faith and 
these confessions is reason enough for our rest- 
lessness and discontent, our words of mutual re- 
assurance, our splendid hope and courage, and 
our unflagging industry. 

Efficiency, then, is the duty of the hour. But 
1 Macfadyen, Constructive Congregational Ideals, p. 47. 

[10] 



Essential Congregationalism 

efficiency has a fuller meaning in this social age. 
We cannot remain content to go on turning our 
church wheels, putting out individual spiritual 
product in moderate measure. The vast, tangled 
social problems have challenged us. Opportunity 
in these and inspiration for them must be given 
to men on a commensurate scale. Churches that 
are not living a national life cannot be fountains 
of national inspiration. Churches that are not feel- 
ing the pulse-beat of a close-knit body stretching 
far through the straining social fabric cannot 
speak to men's hearts with impulses that carry 
out into the heat and burden of the day. 

The problem of efficiency is to be solved 
through adaptation. This principle may be 
denied a place in a jure divino system Adaptation for 
like that of Rome, but in democratic Efaclenc >' 
life it plays a constant and leading part. All our 
American churches claim to recognize and use 
it, none more properly than ourselves. The swift 
currents of modern advance cannot be shut out of 
the Church. It is the same men working in the 
Church who work in education and politics and 
business. They know that the forces of persua- 
sion, construction and achievement are the same 
throughout. They are watching the shifting 
scenes of human action, the birth of new desires, 
the altered preferences, the sweep of new knowl- 
edge, the demand of new faith. Efficiency, for 
service and returns, is all for which they care. 
Without pain, with only a financial shrug, they 

["I 



Congregational Administration 

throw out upon the scrap-heap machinery that 
scarcely shows wear, but has ceased to meet the 
more exacting requirement. In affairs ecclesi- 
astical and spiritual these men are equally ready 
to discard old for new machinery, and hardly 
keep patient with men too attached to wheels and 
cogs and bands — or the absence of these — to 
discover that life's calendar has swept beyond 
them. 

The Church is under fire for its tardiness in 
adaptation. Parts of its apparatus and methods 
Tardy are charged with being at least obsoles- 
Adaptation ce nt ; it is obvious that the product is 
meager and old-fashioned. And yet w 7 e love them 
so, and cannot give them up, these true and tried 
servants of ours — not living men, but mere 
ways and means of doing things. Says a recent 
writer on our polity, "There is no limit to the 
power of adaptation which our system possesses. 
We are not faithful to our ideal, if we do not 
avail ourselves of it. . . . So far as methods 
are concerned, the Church has power to put on 
institutions when it wants them, and to put them 
off when it is done with them." * These words 
are a shout of administrative liberty, such as 
many a Congregationalist needs to hear. How 
often we act, and how many of us always act, as 
if we could not put off institutions and methods 
when we are done with them, and therefore dare 

1 Macfadyen, Constructive Congregational Ideals, pp. 116, 
119. 

L12J ' 



Essential Congregationalism 

not put them on when we want them. Could we 
once get our seven hundred thousand American 
Congregationalists to rejoice unanimously in 
this power to assume and discard, the work of 
reorganization would go gloriously on. It is 
Professor Ladd of New Haven who wrote in his 
volume * that we Congregationalists ought to be 
willing to change as current conditions may de- 
mand, and must expect the alteration of all save 
our fundamental principles. 

If, willing to adapt our polity to modern life, 
we ask what is required of us, the answer is 
already on many lips. The phrase, An AdeQU ate 
"some form of connectionalism," has Administrative 
lately become current among us, — 7i 
notorious, some stalwart independents might say. 
I like a phrase which I noted in Mr. Heermance's 
book, "An adequate administrative system." We 
need, for adaptation to the hour, an adequate ad- 
ministrative system. This we certainly lack at 
present. We have parts of such a system, work- 
ing admirably in localities and departments. It 
will, for instance, be difficult to increase the 
enterprise, economy and productivity of the 
American Board, as indeed of not a few other 
Congregational agencies. But these parts have 
not been built together into a system. When we 
call for an adequate system, we mean equal to 
duty and its tasks. We have already noted how 
these have grown. They cannot be kept divided 
*The Principles of Church Polity, p. 62. 

[13] 



Congregational Administration 

and subdivided into unrelated parts. We are 
oppressed with the separate administration of our 
national societies, whose work is organically one. 
Our place among the American Churches has 
become far less creditable than formerly. We 
have not retained the leadership which created 
this nation. And when this is said, it is not that 
petty thing, denominational rivalry, that is in 
mind, but duty to God and service to the abysmal 
needs of men. We are not so useful compara- 
tively in the day's work as we used to be; our 
polity sometimes seems less so than other 
polities; and it is being employed to greater ef- 
fect in other than Congregational hands. Others 
are showing us how much more a body of 
churches can do than we are doing. We appear 
to lack practical wisdom in administrative meth- 
ods. This charge is brought against us from 
without and within, and judgment must be con- 
fessed when the case is stated in such compara- 
tive terms. In such terms, I say, for the case 
must be carefully put in order to be true. I can- 
not see that we Congregationalists have declined 
in either amount or quality of service. I believe 
our moral and spiritual living as a whole to be 
higher than ever, less morbid, more wholesome 
and out-of-doors, more winsome and productive. 
Our ministry never was so well equipped, de- 
voted and faithful. Our methods never showed 
so much of wise adaptation and enterprise. Our 
resources are more generously expended than 

[14] 



Essential Congregationalism 

ever. But the comparison with the past has less 
of rebuke and impulse than some other compari- 
sons. Measured by the immense strides of mod- 
ern life, the bewildering growth of resources, the 
astounding disclosures of human need, the ex- 
tent of new opportunity, the clearer vision of 
Christ our King, the sharpened conscience of de- 
votion to Him — measured by these tests which 
rise out of the conditions of the hour and hang 
in the sky before us, our service has lagged and 
fallen. Though we are greater and better than 
ever, we are seriously inadequate for to-day and 
to-morrow. Our administrative system — have 
we anything which can be called such ? — was 
devised for a smaller and simpler day. Hence- 
forth details of work done locally are to be set 
in vast plans, constructed into a whole, directed 
and distributed from gathering-points and from 
the center of all. 

Considering the erection of an adequate ad- 
ministrative system upon our Congregational 
principles and with the use of the upward Trend of 
good and fruitful forms already Organization 
possessed, the first thing to notice and safeguard 
is the fact that our organific direction is from be- 
low upward. We do not begin with overlords, 
whether called bishops or superintendents or 
ministers. We begin with common men, free 
individuals, uncoerced, associating themselves in 
voluntary local churches, each church as free in 
its own domain as the souls that compose it. We 

[15] 



Congregational Administration 

form local churches, not by permission or order 
from without, but by divine grace in the heart. 
The primary obligation to organize ourselves into 
churches is duty directly to God and human need. 
From this principle of organization under divine 
constraint free of all human authority we swing 
our total administrative system. This sunders 
us radically from all systems that work from 
above downward, from the Papal polity surely, 
from the Episcopal polity almost as completely; 
not however from the Presbyterian polity, which 
begins as we do from the free individual and the 
local church, but further on adds elements of 
authority which we decline. Our distinguishing 
mark, therefore, from all other polities together 
lies beyond the formation of voluntary churches ; 
it lies in the direct democracy and inalienable 
authority of the local churches. Into their pri- 
vate domain no hand from without can be thrust. 
They exercise a certain rightful power, often 
called authority, over their own members, based 
on the individual duty of uniting in churches, of 
staying there, and of behaving Christianly. This 
authority is no more than the semblance of co- 
ercion, inasmuch as a member cannot be held in 
membership if determined to withdraw. Au- 
thority, then, even in local churches, is only the 
standing affirmation of universal duty and rea- 
sonable service; it is right reason; it is personal 
and corporate influence uttered and exerted from 
one to another and by all unto each. Church 

[16] 



Essential Congregationalism 

officers are but appointed agents and channels of 
such quasi authority, deriving their vocation and 
enduement from God, their fitness from culture 
methods, their specific local enlistment from the 
churches themselves. Discipline and organized 
service are thus possible only as drawing all their 
vitality from personal loyalty to Christ translated 
voluntarily into terms of church-membership and 
work. Thus tenuous and weak appears ecclesi- 
astical leadership when referred to its funda- 
mentals. But so deep running and inwardly con- 
straining is this loyalty to Christ and the Church 
that leadership becomes, even in our voluntary 
system, a noble and influential vocation, discipline 
a saving grace, and united action a dependable, 
mighty, and world-wide power. 

The local church, thus principled, becomes 
the vital unit for all the larger forms in the polity. 
Out of it, not from individual Chris- Local church 
tians, arise those larger forms. Asso-the vital unit 
ciations, conferences, councils, societies, National 
Council, all are organizations of local churches, 
not of individual Christians, not of independent 
and authoritative officials. The churches unite 
of their own will into all these social forms, giv- 
ing to them their leadership, their standing war- 
rant, their life itself. General order, consistency, 
sympathy, effective union are secured by free 
agreement in adopting the same forms. Similar 
forms and uniform terminology thus become im- 
portant. The higher groups, always composed 

[17] 



Congregational Administration 

of churches, though acting through representa- 
tives, depend on the lower groups, as these im- 
mediately upon the churches. Thus organization 
proceeds from below upward, while leadership 
and influence are trusts and ministration, not au- 
thority and commandment. We have, more- 
over, a way, especially by means of local asso- 
ciations and councils, of keeping all the groups 
in intimate relations with the churches them- 
selves, as will further appear in later lectures. 
This local church derivation and dependence, with 
the consequent procedure upward, are of prime 
importance to the conception and operation of 
our polity, and must be safeguarded in all its de- 
velopments. 

A second feature of our polity structure is its 
direct democracy, or its combination of direct 
direct and indirect democracy. Each local 
Democracy church is a direct or pure democracy. 
We, the people en. masse, handle affairs with im- 
mediate touch. Our theory is that each member 
be an intelligent voter and capable co-worker, 
able to propose, discuss and pass upon proposi- 
tions, able also to carry his part of the church 
work as either private laborer, officer, or com- 
mitteeman. Our polity calls for and promotes 
universal intelligence and participation. We suf- 
fer no class or order of men to monopolize capa- 
bility or opportunity. We would have no man 
evade his share of obligation or deprive himself 
of privilege or reward. Nor do we surrender 

[18] 



Essential Congregationalism 

opportunity and privilege to any small body 
within the church. At this point we decline the 
company of our nearest friends, the Presby- 
terians, refusing to charge an annually elected 
session with the authoritative conduct of the 
church's life. Reception or dismissal of mem- 
bers, election of delegates to fraternal meetings, 
current phases and problems of local work and 
welfare, cases of discipline — in short, all local 
matters whatsoever we hold in the common hand. 
This is pure democracy, direct popular action 
upon all affairs within reach. 

But not all duty is within reach of the single 
church and individual member. Duty stretches 
away in great circles to the world's Representative 
end. Affairs ecclesiastical and spir- Democrac y 
itual shape up into magnificent proportions, com- 
mensurate with affairs educational, industrial 
and political. Mighty forces, equipped, arrayed 
and directed, are required against entrenched 
evils and vast human needs. On that wide field 
direct democracy is as good as helpless. 
Churches serving in large bands must act by rep- 
resentatives. Mr. John Fiske says, "Representa- 
tive government in counties is necessitated by the 
extent of territory covered; in cities it is neces- 
sitated by the multitude of people." ' The Con- 
gregational churches, having their county, city, 
national and world-wide life, have been forced 
to develop forms of representative or indirect 
* Civil Government in the United States, p. 101. 

[19] 



Congregation al A dministration 

democracy. This is not subversive of our orig- 
inal character or destructive of Congregational 
principles. Our safety lies in preserving in local 
affairs the direct action of the primary assembly. 
We do not substitute representative democracy; 
we add it and assign it its own secondary realm. 
We constitute and direct it from below. The 
local church maintains pure democracy on a bet- 
ter status than does the town meeting. The vital 
and immediate influence of the churches in all 
the larger interests is far greater. For us, as 
for all free churches and states, the problem of 
democracy is the mutual adjustment of pure and 
representative democracy. We must cease to fear 
the latter. We must hold it in firm control, but 
give it worthy and fruitful development. 

This brings us to a third consideration regard- 
ing our proposed adequate administrative sys- 
Administration tem - 0ur representative bodies, 
the sole from the local associations and 

councils up to the National Council, 
are administrative only. Mr. Heermance has 
given us the freshest discussion of this matter, 
comparing the Congregational polity with others 
in respect to the three possible functions — legis- 
lative, judicial and administrative — of repre- 
sentative bodies. Congregationalism began right, 
and has continued so, in excluding all provision 
for legislative and judicial procedure. None of 
our representative bodies are permitted to so 
much as enter those domains, lest we suffer in- 

[20] 



Essential Congregationalism 

sensible encroachments of authority. But in our 
terror of that, we have deprived ourselves of 
the administrative function to a point far below 
efficiency. Herein, says Mr. Heermance, we are 
two-thirds right and one-third wrong-. It is evi- 
dent now in the growing light that we need not 
remain even one-third wrong. We may safely 
correct our administrative mistake. "If we bear 
in mind," adds Mr. Heermance, "that legislation 
and judicature have no place in the Church, in 
general bodies or anywhere else, the liberties of 
the churches are entirely safe." * 

In the administrative function there is no in- 
evitable impairment of personal liberty and local 
independence. These latter the Con- independence 
gregational polity is prepared to pre- not impaired 
serve and guarantee under whatever development 
of an administrative system. For the native pos- 
sessors of authority — individual Christians and 
local churches — do not surrender it. Our repre- 
sentative bodies are granted, not power over the 
churches, but leadership of the churches. In the 
first place, they are given specific tasks, definite 
and circumscribed kinds of work to do, like the 
organization of the church or the ordination of a 
minister. Some would hold these bodies quite 
strictly to prescribed tasks. Dr. Mackennal 
seems to do so, when he says, "It must be borne 
in mind that the representatives of the churches 
. . . are constituted simply to fulfil the spe- 
1 Democracy in the Church, pp. 102, 103. 

[21] 



Congregational Administration 

cific charges committed to them." * Such limits, 
however, are too strait for efficiency and even for 
liberty. Members of Congregational churches 
do not surrender the native right of individual 
and collective initiative when they sit as repre- 
sentatives in administrative bodies. We expect 
initiative of such bodies. They are to lead off 
in the larger fields for which they were created. 
The further they can see and lead forward the 
better. But here is the safeguard: these bodies 
are not, as already remarked, allowed authority 
over the churches. We constitute no body with 
power to coerce us, or to go forward or back 
without us. Apart from us they can do nothing, 
as certain of our higher Congregational bodies 
are in tedious process of discovering. Moreover, 
the creative hand of the churches keeps a dis- 
ciplinary and even a destructive hold upon its 
own agencies. Their personnel is in constant 
flux, their constitutions are exposed to precipitate 
alteration, their very life is not immortal and 
may be snuffed out. And furthermore — and this 
is the most practical thing of all — the churches 
preserve the right of initiative and the power 
to work their will through their representatives. 
Constraint and coercion and authority work, not 
back upon the churches, but from the churches; 
and they work. The representative bodies must 
and will do the bidding of the churches. The 
latter, when convinced and ready, are able to ef- 
*The Witness of Congregationalism, pp. 25, 26. 

[22] 



Essential Congregationalism 

feet their purpose. This is the point of safety 
and power. 

A striking article appeared in the columns of 
the New York Independent, October 22, 1908, 
from the pen of Delos F. Wilcox, Popular initiative 
Ph.D., wherein the author deline- and Pro ^ ess 
ated the undemocratic development of our repre- 
sentative political forms, and the enslaving pass 
to which we have come. His conclusion is this: 
"The next step forward in the program of polit- 
ical development is the democratization of the 
forms of government. All other issues pale into 
insignificance before this. Shall the people be 
able to exercise political initiative and crystallize 
their intelligence into progress?" 1 In this most 
gracious and potent liberty we of the Congrega- 
tional polity live and labor in religion. We are 
entirely able to exercise initiative and crystallize 
our intelligence into progress. We have no pro- 
visions, nor will we consent to any, whereby our 
representative bodies can ever despoil us of this 
free power of popular initiative and control 
Secure in this possession, we need not hesitate 
to develop an adequate administrative system and 
keep it adequate to the advancing day. 

A fourth characteristic of our polity is found 
in the fact that our administrative force is public 
opinion or right reason. There are Public opinion 
other phrases for it, such as public our Force . 
sentiment, general consent. It is more than 
1 Independent, p. 924. 

[23] 



Congregational Administration 

truth; it is a certain employment of truth. It 
is common acknowledgment of truth in general 
and a specific truth in hand, with the active adop- 
tion of the latter as a measure ; it is general agree- 
ment that that is the right thing to do and this 
the proper time to do it. To the authoritative 
polities this seems no power at all, the absence 
of power rather, a helpless and tedious way of 
leaving things to work themselves out. To us 
the method seems of the very essence of freedom, 
and as sure as the mills of God. They who can- 
not abide it must foregather elsewhere. For this 
is really our method and our power. We are 
forever repeating that we have no authority 
which can outrun our public opinion. Our sole 
method is general education, approximately uni- 
versal, on any measure before us, and the re- 
sultant crystallization of conviction and purpose 
regarding it. It is a slow process. We die piti- 
fully often with the desire of our hearts unful- 
filled. But the method is heaven's own, and 
counts one day as a thousand years and a thou- 
sand years as one day. When you get the rea- 
soned conviction and consequent deliberate action 
of a large body of intelligent and conscientious 
men, you have the finest fruit of personality, the 
closest human approach to truth and righteous- 
ness, and the mightiest force under the skies. 
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table rises to 
remark that the essence of real democracy "is not 
in forms of government, but in the omnipotence 

[24] 



Essential Congregationalism 

of public opinion that grows out of it." 1 Our 
leaders should always catch the potent enthusi- 
asms of this method, for our people never will 
yield an inch in the direction of any other method. 
You can do what you will with Congregational- 
ists whom you can convince and persuade, but 
you have no other hope. 

Let us notice how much is involved in this 
method. The point to be reached in every 
practical issue is twofold: (a) Ac- Majority and 
tive agreement of a majority, and Minorit y 
(b) acquiescence and cooperation of the minor- 
ity. This is the lowest point of public opinion; 
until you have reached this, you have no force 
for starting the issue before you. And this ma- 
jority agreement and minority acquiescence may 
be a very low point indeed and equally weak 
force. On the other hand, the crystallization may 
take place at high temperature, generating irre- ; 
sistible energy, whether with large or small 
majority. 

Our theory, however, is unanimity, not major- 
ity and minority. We seek the instruction, con- 
viction and unanimous action of the Unanimity our 
total constituency involved. We Theory and 
labor and wait for this, believing in 
it, knowing it to be the highest reservoir of 
power. Our system stands for the utmost ab- 
sence of unwelcome coercion, though it should 
be but the carrying away of a small minority by 
1 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, p. 35. 
[25] 



Congregational Administration 

a great majority cm a trivial issue. And we be- 
lieve that what is true and wise ought to be, and 
at length will be, unanimously accepted. We are, 
on the other hand, quite accustomed to the power 
of minorities to hinder or to mar, even to hold 
the real truth and carry it finally to victory. 
They can delay, prevent, or render futile the tru- 
est or wisest measures, and have been known to 
do so. They can enforce their will on the princi- 
ple of noblesse oblige; the majority will wait for 
time and reason, or will even give up the whole 
issue. The minority will often split the body or 
withdraw rather than acquiesce in a decision how- 
ever fairly and patiently reached; and the ma- 
jority is sometimes right in counting the loss of 
the issue in dispute less grievous than a breach 
in the body. We are so accustomed to these ad- 
ministrative phases that illustrations are needless. 
It often seems as if Congregational procedure 
were by minorities, not by majorities; it is almost 
true that minorities rule. The pursuit of unan- 
imity, with constant fraternal regard for the 
slow, the unwilling, the blind, the unheeding, the 
self-conscious, is an ideal pursuit, producing high 
and generous character ; but its threat to block all 
progress must not be endured. 

A chapter on the virtues and duties of Con- 
gregational minorities is due in our polity man- 
uals. The rule is not too rigid that minorities, 
whether of one or of hundreds, should yield and 
cooperate except in extreme cases of principle. 

[26] 



Essential Congregationalism 

And it should be added that extreme cases of 
principle are rarer in administrative affairs than 
heated litigants are apt to imagine. Many a 
question of practical procedure is erected into a 
moral test of immortality. The conscience is a 
different faculty from the will; a moral judgment 
other than an obstinate preference. Great relief 
is possible in our polity at this point of the duty 
of minorities upon administrative measures which 
contain no hint of legislative or judicial authority. 
A fifth and final point to consider respecting 
an adequate administrative system is the import- 
ance of achieving national unity. I National unity 
am aware that some brethren who t0 be Achieved 
would agree with most that has been said thus 
far might take fright at so ambitious a phrase. 
Yet should we not despair of securing unanimity 
for this higher and stronger thing. The foregoing 
discussion has been in vain if the cry of danger to 
our liberties is raised here. And the appeal for 
efficiency is vain if a denominational halt be called 
this side of an all-inclusive and enduring unity. 
Mr. John Fiske has put our case in a brilliant 
sentence in his volume, "The Beginnings of New 
England." He says, "Our experience has now 
so far widened that we can see . . . that the 
only perdurable government must be that which 
succeeds in achieving national unity on a grand 
scale, without weakening the sense of personal 
and local independence." * Our Congregational 
1 The Beginnings of New England, p. 23. 

[27] 



Congregational 'Administration 

problem could not be better stated, only substi- 
tuting the word organization for the word gov- 
ernment — "the only perdurable organization 
must be that which succeeds in achieving national 
unity on a grand scale without weakening the 
sense of personal and local independence." Mr. 
Fiske was an old-line Congregationalist in thus 
insisting on local independence and a new-line 
Congregationalist in affirming national unity. 
We have the independence, safe and stable; we 
must achieve the unity if we would endure. No 
voice is clearer or stronger than Mr. Fiske's, but 
the chorus is already large and inspiriting. The 
Rev. D. Macfadyen in his "Constructive Con- 
gregational Ideals" gives us excellent statements 
by himself and other writers. "Those," he says, 
"who understand the Congregational ideal best 
in England and the United States have main- 
tained .... that for the expression of the 
common spirit and sacrificial life of our churches 
our existing organizations are inadequate. Large 
investments are required for large tasks. As the 
churches fir 1 themselves now confronted by 
duties on the scale of a nation and an empire, 
•:; . '■' . it has become necessary to find suitable 
administrative and executive instruments for the 
tasks which have fallen to them." * Again he 
speaks of certain addresses printed in his volume 
as "alike in adopting what for want of a better 
phrase is commonly called the statesman's point 
'Constructive Congregational Ideals, pp. 9-1 1. 

[28] 



Essential Congregationalism 

of view — that is, they grasp the life of the de- 
nomination as a whole and try to shape it in the 
light of the higher politics of the kingdom of 
God. . . . They assume that it is possible to 
prepare ourselves both in spirit and method for 
a more united, disciplined and organized service 
of Christ in the nation and the kingdom of God 
than we have yet accomplished." * "Who," ex- 
claims another, "shall demonstrate the important 
theorem — how without abandoning a single 
principle we shall gain firm cohesion and 
multiplied strength; how we may learn to exist, 
no longer as comminuted particles which the 
wind of events may drive away, but as a whole 
mass, separate in its organization, but confeder- 
ate in its united action; free from tyranny and 
free from slavery, a great, united, cooperating 
Christian body." 2 "If Congregationalism," con- 
tinues the same writer, "be incapable of a large 
and generous union, it lacks an important element 
of spiritual power; whilst, if it be capable of it, it 
must needs put forth means and agencies which 
have hitherto been unfamiliar." 3 

These quotations might be buttressed by many 
more. We are aware how frequently the sub- 
ject finds expression in our religious Toward unity 
papers and programs. We are far and 0rder 
from unanimity, but we are discussing and ex- 
perimenting from Maine to California, and all 

1 Constructive Congregational Ideals, pp. 17, 18. 

2 Ibid, pp. 60, 61. 

3 Ibid, pp. 57, 58. 

[29] 



Congregational Administration 

movement is toward unity and order ; no instance 
of the opposite procedure has come to my at- 
tention. By an overwhelming majority we in- 
tend to achieve national unity. We like to feel 
already the strengthening cords and bands, the 
touch of shoulders, the eye to eye, the impulse 
of vast affairs, the thrill of being one and mighty. 
Throughout the land we are responsive to the 
stroke of such words as Mr. Fiske's upon the 
Congregational conscience. And it is good for 
us just now to iterate and reiterate from ocean 
to ocean and from lakes to gulf this call of the 
hour, till "the subliminal self" catches the sug- 
gestion. "The only perdurable organization 
must be that which succeeds in achieving national 
unity on a grand scale without weakening the 
sense of personal and local independence. " This 
is the complete significance of an adequate ad- 
ministrative system, one that adjusts us to this 
national and international age, this interdenom- 
inational and missionary age, this age which reads 
undismayed the duty of world evangelization 
and the transformation of total humanity into the 
Kingdom of God. Though we did not mean to 
be, we have been weak and backward, we lovers 
of our separate ways ; we must achieve unity, and 
coin our corporate power into reconstructed man- 
hood and social order. 

Does it not follow from the course of our dis- 
cussion that Congregationalism has a real admin- 
istrative problem to solve, the task of constructing 

[30] 



Essential Congregationalism 

new and enlarged denominational machinery? 
There are times in religion — and the present is 
one of them for us Congregation- A Re ai Problem 

alistS When OUtward matters Of in Administration 

organization and method are the necessity of 
the hour. The criticism is neither false nor su- 
perficial that we have confined ourselves too ex- 
clusively to the individual and spiritual side of 
our church life. It is always and everywhere 
true that the spiritual is the paramount issue; it 
is not true always and everywhere that it can 
, successfully be given exclusive pursuit. Spiritual 
forces have regard to the fitness of human agen- 
cies. We may not expect God to do mighty spir- 
itual works in our deliberate neglect of resources 
and strategy. And we properly charge with 
error those who find nothing to do in the King- 
dom of Christ but to convert sinners by evan- 
gelistic methods and edify saints by spiritual 
instruction and moral suasion. There are magnifi- 
cent and awful things to do which require more 
exterior ministration, such as cleansing filthy 
homes, running a juvenile court, electing clean 
and capable civic officials, succoring earth- 
quake-stricken Italy, distributing world-wide 
streams of religion charged full with edu- 
cation and civilized ways. Unorganized men 
or churches, taking hold as each will, cannot 
do this greater work and do it all and 
do it all the time. Nothing can effect it save 
the studied array and strategic deployment of 

[3i] 



Congregational Administration 
mighty forces, of all the forces there are. This 
is forgotten when in a low day the cry is raised 
that nothing is necessary but more spirituality 
and evangelism, purer doctrine, restored faith in 
the Bible, deeper loyalty to Christ. These do not 
always come at call. They are hindered now 
by our disturbed and protesting attention to ad- 
ministration. We are not free-minded for our 
spiritual work. The remedy lies, not in absorbed, 
unorganized devotion to the spiritual ; that would 
throw us the more out of joint with the modern 
world. It lies in solving the outer problems, un- 
til soon, adjusted in ways suitable to the new day, 
we find "a heart at leisure from itself" and re- 
cover "the joy of the working." 

Such development of our administrative sys- 
tem must be the general concern. It has already 
Administration been noticed that in a democracy 
the General the cultivation of patriotic citizen- 
ship and the service of the State are 
universal duties. It has been well said that a 
democracy never enjoys the rule of the best, but 
only of the average man. Transfer the adminis- 
tration to the few best, and you convert your 
democracy into an aristocracy. Preserve your 
democracy by all means, cultivate and qualify 
the average ability, extend the general partici- 
pation. Congregationalists everywhere should 
give its due measure of thoughtful effort to 
polity. 

Nor is this so superficial and unworthy as 

[32] 



Essential Congrega tionalism 

deemed by some. Its honorable character is seen 
in the State, where it is accounted a principal de- 
partment Of Study and action, One Of Administration 

the highest vocations. The states- worthy and 
man and the political economist are 
not working directly upon character. Their serv- 
ice to manhood is indirect. But though they 
hold no evangelistic services, they are endlessly 
evangelizing. You do not think of Abraham 
Lincoln as a mere administrator — the phrase 
often becomes a sneer upon Congregational lips 
— nor Theodore Roosevelt, nor President Taft, 
nor Governor Hughes, nor Everett Colby, nor 
Uren of Oregon ; nor in education, the presidents 
of our colleges and secondary schools; nor in 
our Church, Leonard Bacon, nor H. M. Dexter, 
nor A. H. Quint, nor the secretaries of our na- 
tional societies. Administrative work done with 
vision and heart is worthy of the best man's part, 
is filled with the spirit of worship, serves the 
Kingdom of heaven at principal points, greatens 
the servants, organizes the progress of mankind. 
Polity is intimately interwoven with doctrine, as 
Professor Ladd and others have taken pains to 
show. At its source our Congregational organi- 
zation flows out of our democratic conception of 
the ways of God with man. An aristocratic and 
mediative conception of the Holy Spirit gives an 
aristocratic polity. Nor can the deep influence 
of organization and administration upon personal 
and social character, in either State or Church, be 

[33] 



Congregation al Administration 

overlooked- We of this land of the free church 
and the free state know what we can do in a few 
decades in the Philippines for peoples just re- 
leased from four hundred years of lordliness and 
degradation. Dr. R. W. Dale wrote that questions 
of organization and polity "cannot be evaded or 
postponed. Ecclesiastical institutions are at once 
an expression and a discipline of the character of 
the churches. The connection between organ- 
ization and life is never accidental or arbitrary/' 
We ought not to speak with a sneer or even light- 
ness, adds Mr. Macfadyen, of "mere matters of 
organization. It would be as reasonable for the 
soul to speak of mere matters of the body. 
... It is true that a soul may live and triumph over 
manifest infirmities and deficiencies; and this is 
very much what the Congregational ideal has done 
with its very defective organization for more than 
two hundred years. But part of the duty which 
our churches owe to the principles and ideals they 
inherit is to give them the solid assistance of an 
effective business management and practical or- 
ganization." 2 Here, then, is the need of this hour 
for Congregationalists — "an adequate adminis- 
trative system," "achieving national unity with- 
out weakening the sense of personal and local in- 
dependence." In words historic and immortal, 
"we can if we will." 



1 Congregational Church Polity, pp. 3, 4. 
2 Constructive Congregational Ideals, pp. 44-47. 

[34] 



LECTURE II 
MINISTERIAL LEADERSHIP 



II 

MINISTERIAL LEADERSHIP 

In our Congregational theory the Church is 
first of all, composed of ordinary men and women 
who love our Lord Jesus Christ and unite for 
service in his name. This theory, as held in com- 
pleteness and consistency by us, distinguishes our 
polity. Out of the Church comes the specialized 
ministry of religion. Needing instructors and 
leaders, the Church lays hands on a sufficient 
number and puts them forth. They in turn are 
evermore responsible to the Church and depend 
upon her for opportunity and resources. The 
Church is first, the ministry second and sub- 
ordinate. 

In practical administration, however, the min- 
istry leads. Scarcely an individual church any- 
where is organized apart from its Primacy of 
agency. The machinery of the Leadership 
Kingdom is in its hands even to an un- 
fortunate degree. This leadership of a class 
of men is inevitable and not to be deplored. 
No more than the State, can the Church prosper 
save by competent and devoted leaders. The 
primacy of leadership among practical problems 
of administration needs emphasis, but not argu- 
ment. Mr. John R. Mott, in his latest volume, 
"The Future Leadership of the Church/' is say- 
ing, "Wherever the Church has proved inade- 
quate, it has been due to inadequate leadership. 

[37] 



Congregational Administration 

. . . The failure to raise up a competent min- 
istry would be a far greater failure than not to 
win converts to the faith, because the enlargement 
of the Kingdom ever waits for leaders of power. 
... To secure able men for the Christian min- 
istry is an object of transcendent, urgent, and 
world-wide concern. It involves the life, the 
growth, the extension of the Church — the fu- 
ture of Christianity itself/' * 

At the present moment we Congregationalists 
— and others with us — are convicted of remiss- 
ness and consequent weakness on this principal 
point. Our problem of leadership is affecting to 
an alarming degree our whole enterprise. It has 
been for some years a low time with regard to 
our ministry. Full ranks of young men have not 
been coming. Too few of the best equipped men 
have come. We are painfully aware of a low 
conception of the ministry among college stu- 
dents. The phases and causes of this situation 
have been much in print, and are freshly given 
in Mr. Mott's volume. There are this year en- 
couraging signs that the tide will make in again, 
but it is too soon to predict this with assurance. 

Primary responsibility for its leadership rests 
upon the Church. It may not be discharged upon 
The Church Pri- the ministry, nor upon the 
mariiy Responsible young men in colleges, nor 
even upon the Christian home. This mighty 
institution named the Church, whose exist- 
x The Future Leadership of the Church, pp. 3, 4. 

[3»r 



! 



Ministerial Leadership 

ence, prosperity and usefulness absolutely de- 
pend, under God, upon its leadership, should 
maintain measures adequate to insure that lead- 
ership. Its best agency for this is the Christian 
home. At this time the Church and the home 
are not furnishing the conditions and motives 
which, when present, will always carry a sufficient 
number of their sons into the ministry. That 
vocation is now discredited in the minds of great 
numbers of Christian parents and church-mem- 
bers, and hence inevitably in the minds of the 
boys and young men. Mr. Mott's unequaled ob- 
servation leads him to testify that increasing 
numbers of Christian parents and church-mem- 
bers in the evangelical churches generally do not 
care to have their sons enter the ministry, are 
not thinking them prayerfully on in that direc- 
tion, but are actively turning them toward other 
vocations. This atmosphere cannot be kept nega- 
tive, leaving young men unaffected to reach an 
unbiased decision. Indeed, there is little scruple 
about making it affirmative and influential. Un- 
til it is corrected the best hope tarries. Until the 
ministry is restored to its sacred place in the re- 
gard of church-members and parents, no formal 
measures can contend successfully for recruits. 
Nor is there any correction of this state of things 
save by what the psychologists are calling re- 
education. The mind of the Church and the 
home, now working too habitually away from 
the ministry, must be restored to a favorable 

[39] 



Congregational Administration 

habit. It is a case for mental and spiritual heal- 
ing — disclaiming the technical meaning of the 
phrase. 

But now, having laid this obligation where it 
fundamentally belongs, upon the Church as an 
Ministry Mainly institution, upon Christians and 
Responsible church-members in general, upon 
parents and teachers and church officers in 
particular, I feel like throwing it specifically 
upon the ministry itself. When you are 
not theorizing, but urging practical measures, 
you have to say that in every department of hu- 
man activity results depend upon the leaders of 
action. Theirs is the prime responsibility for the 
long working of cause and effect. The ministry 
of the Church is definitely responsible for its 
own numbers and quality. The reeducation of 
the Church and the home on this subject is its 
task. And prior to that it has to rectify its own 
state of mind. For at the present time the min- 
istry is not warmly accrediting and sustaining 
its own craft, is not exalting its own vocation, is 
not crying with an exultant challenge to the 
3^>ung men, including its own sons. Here as 
elsewhere statements must be careful, and the ap- 
peal is to your general observation. On that 
basis, and on suggestive evidence appearing time 
by time in our religious journals, are we not 
within bounds in saying that there is in the minds 
and homes of ministers themselves wide-spread 
reluctance to have their own sons follow them? 

[40] 



Ministerial Leadership 

Mr. Mott says : "Even ministers and their wives, 
in an increasing number of cases, are not encour- 
aging their sons to consider this calling. Far too 
frequently they positively discourage such serious 
consideration/' * If this is true, there is much 
to be said in palliation and even justification of 
special cases ; there is also much to be said to the 
Church about suffering such a state of things, 
such treatment of its leaders, as would justify 
any number of them in reaching this state of 
mind. But my contention at this moment is this, 
that such a minister, or such a group of minis- 
ters, is both unfit and unwilling to lead other 
men's sons into the ministry, unfit and unwilling 
to reeducate the Church and the home on the 
subject The case must remain lean and unhope- 
ful so long and so far as the ministers of Christ 
remain heavy-laden and dispirited with their 
task, so far as they judge it by its incidentals, so 
far as its great visions fail them!, so far as they 
cannot lay upon their own sons first and then on 
others a hand of joy unspeakable and full of 
glory. ^ \ 

And now — for we are in the domain of ad- 
ministration — it is urged that Congregational- 

istS Should take constructive Adequate Measures 

measures for sustaining their Required 
ministerial leadership at its highest point 
of efficiency. We certainly have no ade- 
quate measures at present. Far too little is being 
1 Future Leadership of the Church, p. 96. 

[41] 



Congregational Administration 

done, and most of that is volunteer effort, partial 
and unrelated. The Congregational denomination 
as such, with a national life and world-wide serv- 
ice, is conducting no apparatus for assuring its 
own permanent power through adequate leader- 
ship. It is wonderful that we fare on as well as 
we do. But are we not arriving at that adminis- 
trative consciousness which would take earnest 
measures to restore conditions and develop pro- 
visions? It is time that the Congregational 
Church undertook its ministerial leadership in 
large-minded, far-reaching and patient plans. 

What, then, have we to do that may be said 
to require so much? We have, in brief phrase, 
to reeducate our churches, to rectify conditions, 
and then to go out after the best young men in 
our colleges and homes. 

I. First in the order of a minister's career 
stands his theological training. Our schools of 
oonsregationai theology possess the confidence 

Divinity Schools f churches and ministry to 
a high degree. There is, of course, dis- 
tressed and militant criticism; there are also 
better grades of the same fabric, not less firm, 
but inwrought with courtesy, faith and cheer. 
There are improvements and enrichments always 
due in theological training. It is desirable that 
these be pressed upon the seminaries, for vested 
interests incline to slow down into security and 
comfort. But criticism and impulse are in no 
danger of failing from the ecclesiastical earth. 

[42I 



Ministerial Leadership 

What, then, should our churches, as organized 
into a branch of the Church of Christ, do for 
and with the seminaries? The question of de- 
nominational control, perhaps, comes first to 
mind. There is excellent historical counsel on 
this subject. It is vital to both churches and sem- 
inaries to enjoy unreserved intimacy together. 
The mutual benefits are too obvious for rehearsal. 
The seminaries draw their life from the Church 
and the Kingdom, and exist solely to serve these. 
Administrative control by the organized churches 
is logical and practical, even in Congregational- 
ism ; its absence looks strange to many eyes, but 
this also is very Congregational. Local auton- 
omy here does not imperil great interests, while it 
makes for that priceless thing, the freedom of 
the truth. Advance has come and must come 
through the fearless pioneering of men who grow 
used to the wide horizon. But, short of control, 
the association of churches and ministers with 
the theological schools should be perfect, pro- 
moted on both sides with perseverance and love. 
Each should offer the other all possible service. 
Each should be sure of the other's readiness. 
The active exchange should be continuous and 
whole-hearted. 

Given intimate association and sturdy criti- 
cism, there is but one further requisite for 
assuring continuous improvement increasea 
and adaptation in our ministerial Endowments 
training. That one essential is ample resources. 

[43] 



Congregation al A dministration 

The same old cry, to be sure, simply because 
there is no other cry and no adequate re- 
sponse to this one. The required advances 
in training none see more sanely or desire 
more ardently than our seminary faculties and 
trustee boards. Give them power to do always 
the better thing, and they will do it; any timor- 
ous or indolent reluctance is easily overcome. 

Down to almost the present hour in Congre- 
gational administration, financial action has been 
entirely local, individual and voluntary. A bet- 
ter day has dawned. Witness our scheme of 
proportionate benevolence, here at last and here 
to stay. We are reducing to system the use of 
money in the service of God; the day of senti- 
mental disorder is declining. Into this process 
our theological institutions should be admitted. 
Endorsement of the seminaries by the National 
Council and other denominational bodies as con- 
spicuous parts of our machinery requiring pro- 
vision adequate to extreme efficiency would sound 
an urgent note in the ears of our generous givers. 
Enormous gifts go annually into education. No 
proper proportion of these is for theological edu- 
cation. If one or two of our seminaries are am- 
ply endowed through private generosity, the rest 
are straitened and strained well-nigh to the 
breaking point. Our churches want the finest 
young men out of the best equipped colleges of 
the land. They cannot have them unless they 
enable their professional schools to equal, in their 

[44] 



Ministerial Leadership 

own department, the amplitude, the freedom, the 
pedagogical quality to which the young men have 
become accustomed in the colleges. The lack 
at present is not in the methods in vogue in our 
theological halls, nor in the men who labor there ; 
it is in the financial inability of these alert and 
eager men to develop the methods. 

II. Considering conditions in the ministry 
which need attention and repair, the first is that of 
the minister's salary. This is doubtless to salaries 
be regarded as the lowest thing of all but it can- 
no be belittled out of sight. Recently the Rev. 
Jonathan Hardup and his friends have been ex- 
pressing breezy and not at all sordid opinions in 
our religious papers. The National Council at its 
Cleveland meeting passed an earnest resolution 
that better financial support of the ministry be 
urged upon the churches. Several important arti- 
cles during recent years in our magazine litera- 
ture have discussed this factor in the situation; 
none so frankly and justly as Mr. Mott's volume, 
to which frequent reference is being made in this 
lecture. The cost of education for the ministry 
and of living as ministers must live, is steadily 
increasing. The special demands upon the par- 
son's purse are not only greater than formerly, 
but greater in proportion to his income than upon 
any other person in the community. His salary 
has not risen proportionately; in many commu- 
nities it has declined. "Thousands of ministers 
receive stipends which amount to less than the 

[45] 



Congregational Administration 

wages of day laborers/' Nor is the meager sal- 
ary always paid promptly, while some of it is 
never paid. This financial injustice constitutes 
a main deterrent from the ministry. It acts upon 
the young men themselves, and still more forcibly 
upon their parents. But it were well if the 
churches could understand hozv it acts. It is no 
matter of shrewd commercial calculation. In 
this question are involved high interests and sa- 
cred values, such as a minister's financial integrity 
and standing in the community, his personal 
growth by means of books and meetings and 
travel, his mental ease and freedom for the high 
levels whereon lies the significance of religious 
work, his ability to create and sustain a home, 
the education of his children, his provision for 
sickness and old age. All these and other things 
belong inherently to manhood; they are human, 
not merely professional. And being human, 
they are not to be nullified by professional 
conditions. 

Now the rub comes at the point of discovery 
that these financial conditions of the ministry are 
wrong unnecessary and morally wrong, 

conditions Neither consecrated young men nor 
their parents are afraid of poverty. Min- 
isters who are worth while do not abandon 
the ministry through love of money. Nec- 
essary and fruitful sacrifice commands as much 
heroism as ever. But the current financial 
conditions of the ministry are not necessary, and 

[46] 



Ministerial Leadership 

submission to them is ceasing to be heroic. 
"Men," says Mr. Mott, "are not less heroic than 
of old; but they have knowledge and discern- 
ment, and they see that it is not poverty, but care- 
lessness and selfishness that dictate the financial 
provision for many ministers to-day." 1 This 
means that the pastor's work may lie among men 
and women who will discredit him in advance 
for accepting an unworthy and ineffective situa- 
tion, who will be by so much less accessible to 
the high impulses which he brings, who will, 
worst of all, be so far forth themselves unfit to- 
constitute a sacrificial force for Christ and right- 
eousness. Less wonder, in this view of the 
facts, that the young man shuns the barren 
sacrifice, and that his parents, living in a 
parsonage, perhaps, are sadly silent as he turns 
away. 

The aim of this moment is less to describe this 
situation than to urge denominational action to 
correct what has grown to be a great H ow correct 
wrong. In the unequal local con- the wrongr 
ditions of our churches the difficulty cannot 
be conquered separately. Cooperative effort 
is required upon a denominational and even 
an interdenominational scale. Example and 
stimulus are given us by our English breth- 
ren. The Congregational Union of Eng- 
land and Wales at its meeting in May, 1909, 
adopted with enthusiasm a plan for raising and 
1 Future Leadership of the Church, p. 93. 

[47] 



Congregational A dministratio n 

administering "the Central Fund for Ministerial 
Support" The amount to be raised is not less 
than two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. It 
will be vested in The Congregational Union of 
England and Wales, Incorporated, and be con- 
trolled by the Council of the Union in accordance 
with the careful terms of the Central Fund 
Scheme. The object is "the better support of 
the recognized ministry of the Union, un- 
til an adequate minimum stipend shall be 
secured for all accredited ministers in charge," 
after which the Fund shall also be available for 
grants to ministers temporarily without charge 
and ministers superannuated. The Union has 
taken this radical step believing "that once this 
primary problem is satisfactorily dealt with, the 
seriousness of other denominational difficulties 
will be largely relieved." It may be added that 
the Baptist body in England has formulated an 
equally thoroughgoing provision for ministerial 
support. These examples, afforded by bodies 
standing equally with us for local autonomy, 
we Congregationalists ought soon to imi- 
tate. Our primary problem is the same and 
calls for similar denominational action. Yet 
even then it will remain inadequate to repair in- 
sufficient salaries out of a national Congrega- 
tional treasury. The trouble is enormously 
augmented by sectarianism and the financial 
waste in overchurched communities. We must 
agree with Mr. Mott's conclusion, when he says : 

[48] 



Ministerial Leadership^ 

"Nothing is clearer than that the different Chris- 
tian communions should deal thoroughly with the 
problem of insuring adequate salaries for their 
ministers, and that the various Christian bodies 
unitedly should agree on a policy which would 
do away with the unnecessary multiplication and 
unwise distribution of churches." * ; 

III. Close to this matter of adequate salaries 
lies that of putting within the reach of our min- 
isters the means of sustaining their "The Doom of 
mental and spiritual power. In- Leaderslli P" 
creased salaries, even if they came at once 
wherever needed, would not obviate this 
further requirement. The draught upon the 
pastor's thought and vitality is incessant and un- 
calculating. His sustained intellectual production 
is equaled by no other man in the community. 
His sympathies may never cease to flow, for hu- 
man need holds the spigot open night and day. 
It is Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes who says, better 
lose a pint of blood than have a nerve tapped. 
Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall, in a lecture from this 
platform, thus presented in thrilling words "the 
doom of leadership" : 3 

"He who has borne the burden and heat of the day learns 
in bitterness of soul the doom of leadership. To stand 
in the midst of the ecclesia, with the ordinary vicissitudes 
of man's life transpiring upon one's self from day to day, 
its variations of mental activity, its episodes of spiritual 
depression, its yoke of earthly care, its fettering relation- 
ships, and yet to behold a thousand souls assembled and 
waiting for inspiration from one soul ; to be conscious per- 

x Future Leadership of the Church, p. 94. 

[49] 



Congregational Administration 

petually of this silent demand upon one's selfhood; to know 
that life must be maintained at the giving point, at the 
point of spiritual exaltation, where influence is generated 
for the uplift of many souls; to look into the faces of men 
and women gathered in the house of God, and to see in 
some the hunger of expectation that must be fed, in others 
the absence of energy that must be supplied — that is the 
doom of leadership." l 

Every faithful pastor is consciously living this 
doom; many are living it with a disheartening 
sense of untimely, unforeseen and unnecessary de- 
feat. Within a few weeks a pastor in New Eng- 
land has been reported unable to buy a single book 
since his graduation from the theological school 
several years ago. It is a confession of gathering 
tragedy. The greater tragedy is found in the 
large numbers of such pastors dwelling amid the 
dulness of church-members who do not buy 
books themselves and do not realize the min- 
ister's need. You may find in every state num- 
bers of pastors, not all so-called home mission- 
aries, who, not one year, but year after year, can- 
not afford to attend their State Conference and 
often are embarrassed to attend their local As- 
sociation. Again the laymen who never think of 
going are blind to the worth of such privileges 
to the pastor's brain and heart. 

These are two main points among others in 
which our ministry suffers and declines. Cor- 
porate duty, ecclesiastical strategy and brotherly 
love unite in demanding organized effort to turn 
back this ebbing tide of power. Nor should it 
1 Qualifications for Ministerial Power, p. 173. 

[50] 



Ministerial Leadership 

be done with an eye solely to individual pastors, 
though with personal regard for each one. It 
must be the action of a great branch of the 
Church of Christ providing for its own leader- 
ship for the ends of the Kingdom. We cannot 
let our leaders go unnourished. We cannot af- 
ford to leave our corporate life in the hands of 
weak men ; and the case is worse when inherently 
strong men go weak through lack of sustenance 
than when weak men are enabled to do their best ; 
it is the latter situation on which the divine bless- 
ing may be expected. 

If it be asked what can be done on this line, 
the answer is in part ready; correspondence 
courses of study and reading, sum- Practical 
mer schools or institutes, circulating Measure * 
libraries, pastoral tours through remote re- 
gions, such as have proved so profitable 
in New York State, pastoral exchanges be- 
tween centers and circumference. A great 
body of churches administering cordially such a 
purpose will not be at a loss for timely measures. 
Pastors who are unable to buy books must be pro- 
vided with them by gift or loan. Pastors whose 
studious opportunities were brief and habits 
poorly formed must be given further training. 
Pastors who cannot reach the stimulating atmos- 
phere of our Congregational meetings, our large 
churches and our mighty cities must be brought 
there or have the energy of these transported to 
them. We cannot afford, for the sake of our 

[so 



Congregational Administration 

corporate well-being, in duty to the Kingdom, 
to let our leaders stop reading and learning and 
thinking and greeting the new morning with a 
cheer. Hitherto it has been almost completely 
left to the individual, solitary there in his isolated 
parish. It has been every man for himself, and 
when he can no longer keep the pace, Christ have 
mercy on him ! A beginning of better fraternity 
and strategy has been made. About a dozen states 
have arranged courses of reading which are 
recommended to partially trained men, but which 
are confessedly of small value. There are sum- 
mer schools and institutes here and there, use- 
ful, but limited. Some of our seminaries earn- 
estly try to make their resources helpful, as when 
Andover assembles the home missionary pastors 
of Massachusetts for ten days of instruction and 
spiritual uplift, or when Hartford invites pastors 
and physicians to a course of lectures on Religion 
and Medicine, or when Atlanta maintains con- 
tinual plans which carry her influence through- 
out the Gulf States. In many sections surely, 
though I have meager reports thereon, at least a 
little is done to give men the privilege of attend- 
ing state meetings or district congresses, or to 
visit the cities, touch the pulse-beat of the great 
churches, and catch step with the marching 
throng. At this moment, as often in these lec- 
tures, I find myself speaking as a westerner in 
eastern conditions where my words sound alien 
and irrelevant. Does any pastor in New.Eng- 

[52] 



Ministerial Leadership 

land need to be helped to a city or to a central 
meeting? Lacking railroad fares, he finds the 
walking short. In California — and to some de- 
gree in other states — we have pastors whose 
fares to San Francisco are from $15 to $25 
each way, and the running time a night and a 
day. A Sunday exchange is far beyond reach; 
the visit of a fellow minister rarer than other 
theophanies. Leave such pastors to themselves, 
and your prayers for them ring hollow. Leave 
them to themselves, and your devotion to home 
missions, to the growth of Congregational 
power, to the advance of the Kingdom, lacks 
wisdom at a main point. 

In fine, the personal welfare and industrial ef- 
ficiency of our ministers through the burden and 
heat of the day are coming to form a chief con- 
cern of our churches. In part by increased sal- 
aries, in part by methods of intellectual and spir- 
itual supply, we purpose to do tardy justice to 
those who go out under the crushing ends of our 
common load, we purpose to organize victory 
in regions where we have remained indifferent 
to inefficiency or defeat. The National Council, 
at its Cleveland meeting in 1907, projected action 
along several specific lines and appointed a Com- 
mission on Ministerial Education, with which 
our theological faculties are heartily cooper- 
ating. 

IV. When we organize the case of our pro- 
fessional leaders, we shall not stop short of an- 

[53] 



Congregational Administration 

other provision, viz., that of support in sickness 
and old age. In this we are behind other 
For sickness branches of the Church — of course 

and Old Age we are . ^jg j g cor p 0ra t e work, 

and we have been individualists. Now we all 
know in what caustic language this matter can 
be attacked by a well-to-do individualist, 
and in what cold and unsympathetic words 
the argument can be laid against pauper- 
izing manhood. But there stands here a problem 
in righteousness and brotherhood, to be solved 
without prejudice, with appreciation of fortitude 
and sacrifice in terribly stringent conditions, and 
with a sharp conscience of justice instead of 
charity. 

What does the Church demand of its minis- 
ters ? Nothing, some one replies ; the young man 
Ministry a who enters the ministry takes his 
vocation own r j s k s ail( j must not complain. 

Happily this is not the universal reply, 
and yet many of us have fallen in with 
it, and the age has dropped toward a com- 
mercial conception of the ministry. But God 
will never suffer the conception to prevail. If this 
matter of the Church and her leaders is a busi- 
ness matter, it is spiritual business. It is engaged 
with God upon the spirit of man. The ministry 
is a vocation. The Church recognizes the divine 
call and adjusts her call to that. The Church can- 
not take pleasure in that easy running in and out 
of the ministry of which we see lamentably much 

[54J 



Ministerial Leadership 

today. It is not a business or profession to be 
lightly assumed with a calculating eye and pres- 
ently to be discarded as unprosperous. It is the 
highest of vocations, to be entered with a lifelong 
purpose and uncalculating devotion. The Church 
demands the entire life of her ministers, their 
undivided attention and their unswerving purpose 
unto death; and quality of ministerial work is 
clearly seen to be in direct proportion to such un- 
reserved and dateless consecration. With less 
than this churches often put up, but the Church 
is never satisfied. Really providential interrup- 
tions are understood; but the Church's concep- 
tion of the sacred calling stands at the ideal 
height, and the Church's demands upon her min- 
isters abate nothing from the man's total gift 
of himself and all that he hath. 

Now the Church knows well enough where this 
brings a minister out in old age. He has made 
no material provision for himself ; he could not ; 
the Church would not permit him; it would not 
even allow him normal self-preservation; he is 
worn out untimely, and a younger man is called 
to his parsonage and pulpit — "Business is busi- 
ness!" Oh, but our vaunted individualism has 
led to such heartless evictions of faithful servants 
and such shameless denials of corporate responsi- 
bility for our brethren! Even now, with our 
clearer vision, we are making no haste to rectify 
our action, as our state and national funds for 
ministerial relief pitifully show. But the better 

[55] 



Congrega tional A dminis tra Hon 

days will come, more dutiful on our part as a 
church, more sustained and relieved for servants 
of Christ worn out in the warfare. 

It is a day of old-age pensions. The British 
and German governments exhibit them on the 
largest scales, while they are seen on all sides in 
smaller forms. More centralized denominations 
than ourselves have this provision in full opera- 
tion for their ministries. We must follow them, 
for we cannot come near meeting the case by en- 
larged salaries. The Central Fund Scheme of 
the Congregational Union of England and Wales 
already looks in this direction. 

But one thing we must cease; we must cease 
calling this a charity; it is not charity, it is quid 
Ministerial Relief pro quo; it is well-earned pay- 
not charity merit for labor rendered ; it is 
barely living wages for a life clean fore- 
spent in our service. Our gifts cannot match 
the desert. God will assure "the wages of going 
on and not to die." But let us meanwhile give 
the bread and water, yea, the butter and honey, 
in a way worthier of us and of them. A 
comparison is sometimes made, in a way that 
seems to me mistaken, between the ministry 
and the army and navy. There is more 
of a parallelism here than is usually stated. The 
government pays more adequate salaries and re- 
tires its officers on half pay, because, it is said, 
the government gets the total service of the life, 
whereas the Church cannot command this. I sub- 

[56 j 



Ministerial Leadership 

mit that this is blinking facts and obligation. 
From the hour when the young man enters the 
pastorate, and shall we not say when he enters 
the seminary, the Church commands his total sac- 
rificial service under a command more regal and 
a constraint more potent than those of the State. 
In daily quality, in faithfulness, in completeness 
of sacrifice the Church gets a service unmatched 
by the State ; the State's servants give nobly, even 
Christianly in many cases, but the Church's serv- 
ants give more divinely, for their lives run nearer 
God's. But my point is that you call for their 
all, and you get it ; you get it; the cases wherein 
you do not get it are beneath notice. When, then, 
the State's faithful servants are retiring in fair 
measure of comfort on half pay, how shall your 
spiritual servants fare? Pittances doled out to 
extreme cases of privation, and to such only, can- 
not truthfully be called proper returns for service 
rendered or gifts at all worthy of the giving 
Church. The trouble is not with the committees 
which administer the funds; the trouble is with 
the funds. This matter must be shaped up on 
higher principles than the mere prevention of 
starvation. Far more than that is due to the sick 
or aged servant himself and his family. And 
beyond the obligation to him and them stretches 
the large matter of administrative wisdom. The 
ministry as a factor in our church life, deprived 
of the means of self-provision, must not be left 
to run out into an old age beginning earlier than 

[57] " 



Congregational Administration 

in other callings and wandering off into cool dis- 
missal, neglect and oblivion. It is more than in- 
justice; it is poor policy. The evils of it do not 
escape the young men we want in the ministry, 
do not fail to affect the total product of church 
work, and surely do not meet the approval of the 
Judge who doeth right. 

I would not be understood to mean that the 
Church should bring all its ministers under the 
working of such a policy. It could not, for they 
would not. Most of them manage to escape this 
recourse. As we do justice in other respects, a 
smaller proportion will need it. Perhaps it can 
one day be brought well-nigh to an end. Mean- 
while the high potencies of Christian manhood 
will continue to carry our ministers and their 
families bravely, and for the most part silently, 
through. 

V. There are other things to be done toward 
restoring our ministry to its place of power. 
General conditions vitally affecting pastoral effi- 
ciency, felt by many ministers, perceived by 
young men looking that way, can be much im- 
proved. Some of them are actually better than 
reported ; in these cases the facts need to be shown 
up. 

Freedom of thought and speech is one of the 
points emphasized of late years in most of the 
Ministerial articles upon the ministry. The 
Freedom supposed dearth of this freedom is 
said to be almost the chief deterrent upon 

r 58 ] ' 



Ministerial Leadership 

college men. They get the idea that the 
ministry may not deal honestly and fearlessly 
with truth, following wherever it leads, uttering 
it without fear or favor. They note that even 
yet ministers here and there suffer ecclesiastical 
discipline for their theological holdings and pul- 
pit teachings, or move on to escape disagreement 
with the center aisle. That such things have ut- 
terly ceased from the Congregational domain 
cannot be affirmed. We seem tolerably unani- 
mous against iron creeds and the sport of heresy- 
hunting. We have no tribunals for reducing 
domineering pews, and holding church commit- 
tees to honorable and considerate treatment of 
pastors. And we continue to believe it more 
suitable, usually, for a pastor to suffer and depart 
than to wage even a just and victorious warfare 
likely to result in a torn and bleeding church. 
But we, the ministry and members of the Con- 
gregational churches, have it in our power, first, 
to improve still further our conditions of free 
faith and untrammeled speech, and, second, to 
make it clear to all the world, and to students, 
that unhappy experiences of this kind are to re- 
main as near zero among us as anywhere in the 
world of free thought, and that a young man and 
a minister would better gird up his manhood and 
march on unshrinking past this lion — he is 
chained, and most of him is stuffed. 

Personal opportunity for self-realization and 
useful achievement is another point heavily criti- 

[59] 



Congregational Administration 

cized to the detriment of the ministry. In many 
departments of action to-day such opportunity 
Ministerial is magnificent. Limitless resources 
Opportunity i n an open field challenge man's 
utmost aspiration and endeavor. The minis- 
try appears to be disadvantaged in this re- 
gard. The high-hearted young man says he 
doubts the open field, the resources of action, 
the progressive character of the churches, 
the adequacy of church funds, the enterprise of 
church plans, the breadth of view, the stride for- 
ward which is so thrilling in some other lines. 
Now this is a most sensitive point with a normal 
man up to fifty years of age. The man worth 
while in the ministry demands first of all the 
chance of life. This is the prime inquiry; not 
for comfort, or recognition, but a great field of 
freedom and resource whereon to render to God 
the noblest account of himself. You will not an- 
swer him by pointing to a score of our leading 
churches with a remark about room at the top. 
He is not an individualist. He has accepted the 
age of combination. He thinks the Church 
should act with as wide a reach and as long a 
purpose as does industry or education or 
philanthropy or statesmanship. Such scope he 
would prefer to find elsewhere than to miss it 
in the ministry. A large fraction, I for one be- 
lieve a major fraction, of our six thousand Con- 
gregational ministers are already restive with our 
conservative hesitation to adopt frankly the more 

[60] 



Ministerial Leadership 

efficient organization. In an age of concerted ac- 
tion they do not see, among some thousands of 
independent churches rather gingerly holding 
hands, a rich chance to make full account of their 
lives. And they are right. The opportunity of 
our ministry will not be commensurate with that 
in other departments of modern life until the 
Congregational churches have achieved "a na- 
tional unity on a grand scale' ' — repeating the 
words of John Fiske from the former lecture. 
This is no ungodly lust after a bishopric; it is 
the righteous and timely demand to join a great 
body of men who march out together into the 
great issues where two put ten thousand to flight. 
We have many men who prefer to chase a thou- 
sand alone — God bless them ! 

VI. It is time to formulate what is coming to 
be, I believe, our all but unanimous conception of 
the ministry. And here I must, The congregational 
in the interest of frankness, conception 
acknowledge my disagreement with Mr. Heer- 
mance, whose chapter on the ministry seems 
to me unequal to the rest of his valuable 
volume. With many affirmations and denials in 
this chapter all Congregationalists are in full ac- 
cord. We are as far as ever from the sacerdotal 
idea of the ministry as an exclusive and govern- 
ing priesthood. We stand for "a ministry, not 
an order of priests." We subscribe as heartily 
as ever to the statement adopted by the Council 
of 1865, as follows: — "The ministry of the 

[61] 



Congregational Administration 

gospel by members of the churches who have been 
duly called and set apart to that work implies in 
itself no power of government, and ministers of 
the gospel not elected to office in any church are 
not a hierarchy, nor are they invested with any 
official power in or out of the churches." But 
this has ceased to be a sufficient statement of the 
position and character of our ministry. It does not 
lead logically into the old pastoral theory of the 
ministry advocated by Mr. Heermance, as earlier 
by Dr. Dexter. That theory was that the minis- 
try was no larger than the pastorate, that a man 
entered the ministry only by assuming the pas- 
torate of a local church and ceased from the min- 
istry upon laying down that pastorate. Involved 
in this were several things, some of which have 
permanent validity, some not. The minister was 
chosen out of the membership of the church he 
was to serve ; or if not, he must at once become 
a member of it. His ordination was mere induc- 
tion into that limited pastorate, was of course an 
action of that one church, and was to be repeated, 
as affirmed in the Cambridge Platform, if he ever 
entered upon the pastorate of another church. 
Between pastorates he had no standing as a min- 
ister, though he might be looked upon as worthy 
and experienced. 

Now this pastoral theory became almost 
at once in early New England too small to 
cover the facts. The churches held the min- 
istry in higher esteem and administered it 

[62] 



Ministerial Leadership 

upon a larger view. Ordination became 
a social act, performed by representatives 
of the churches. The ordained pastoral 
man was considered a minister Theory inadequate 
beyond the bounds of his own parish, and 
his official acts properly ministerial wher- 
ever performed. In 1812 the General Con- 
ference of Connecticut asserted that the or- 
dained man remained amenable to discipline 
when out of a pastorate. Repeated ordination 
to the ministry gave way to installation into the 
pastorate, already a different matter in Congre- 
gational eyes. Dismissal from a pastorate ceased 
to be deposition from the ministry. The close 
of the last pastorate of a lifetime was not ipso 
facto departure from the ministry. The man's 
standing in the eyes of men, his responsibility to 
the Congregational order, his right to officiate 
temporarily in any church that invited him — 
in short, his full ministerial character and power, 
both in the Church and before the law of the land, 
abode upon him, and in their sacred folds was 
he buried, however late and full of years. He 
himself, indeed, might lay off his ministerial char- 
acter by definite act of withdrawal. He might, 
if unworthy, be stripped of it, but, as Congre- 
gationalists have jealously protested, only by a 
similar body to that which ordained him, viz., a 
council convened for that specific purpose. This 
is not the practise of the pastoral theory of the 
ministry, any more than it is of the sacerdotal 

[63] 



Congregational Administration 

theory. Neither, it should be added, must we 
keep on affirming the obsolete pastoral theory in 
order to save our practise from slipping over into 
the sacerdotal theory. Nor, be it further added, 
is it the Presbyterian theory. In that scheme 
the minister is not a member of a church at all, 
but of a presbytery. He is thus part of a body 
which is above the churches and has authority in 
the churches. And it is by this body that he is, 
humanly speaking, made a minister. Between 
this and the Congregational practise here advo- 
cated there is a gap which we have neither reason 
nor willingness to bridge. It is, I believe, pos- 
sible to formulate our ministerial theory and 
Congregationally safe to practise it in accordance 
with the larger facts thus presented and the 
wider social order of the present day. 

In our polity, then, the ministry is greater than 
the pastorate. I like Dr. Ross' putting of it as 
Kingdom a function in the Church-Kingdom. 
Theory it i s an order or range of service 
in the Kingdom and the Church. It is 
not ouside the Church, and we rightly hold 
our ministers to church-membership. It is not 
above the Church, not a hierarchy with gov- 
erning power over the churches. It is only 
by way of the pastorate that it becomes official 
in the churches. A minister must be a pastor or 
be invited to perform pastoral service in order 
to get the office and opportunity of leadership in 
any church. The ministry, as distinguished from 

[6 4 ] 



Ministerial Leadership 

the pastorate, is to be found not merely in the 
churches, but in and among them in a pervasive 
sense. It belongs to the churches in common, to 
the Church Catholic. It is a service to the 
Church at large, ready to define itself upon in- 
vitation into a pastorate of any local church at 
any time. This distinction discloses the safety 
enjoyed by every Congregational church with 
reference to the body of men called the ministry. 
No one of these men, nor all of them combined, 
can enter the field of any local church for the 
purpose, or by the power of any official action, 
save upon that church's invitation and for the 
term of that church's pleasure. 

Being such, the ministry is in our Congrega- 
tional view a lifelong function. We do not hold 
that ordination confers an indelible character. It 
rather recognizes a divine call into a sacred and 
permanent vocation. It seems clear to us that 
God has such an enduring service of religion and 
calls men into it. It is the number of men called 
of God into the lifelong service of religion and 
the Church that we, in common with all Chris- 
tians, mean by the ministry. At this point, as 
distinctly as at any, we repudiate the pastoral 
theory with its temporary character. We mean 
to ordain only such men as have entered upon a 
long engagement with God. 

Let us, then, frankly accept the implications of 
this conception. We ordain a man to the ministry 
of Jesus Christ ; we install him into the pastorate 

[6 5 ] 



Congregational A dministratio n 

of a particular church. We should no longer hesi- 
tate at general ordination to the ministry apart 
implications from installation into a pastorate. 
There is no reason in the character of Congrega- 
tional ordination, though there may be special 
and personal reasons, against taking the graduat- 
ing class of any seminary and ordaining them 
together in one great day to the Christian min- 
istry, to go their several ways into pastorates 
or evangelism or religious education or the mis- 
sion field as the Spirit may lead them. In parts 
of our country, perhaps not here in New England, 
we are frankly practising such general ordina- 
tion. And so logical and practical is it, that it 
seems likely to win its way, aided by the modern 
decline of installation and the increasing brevity 
of formal pastorates. 

We should also cease to claim for the local 
church the exclusive right to ordain. That be- 
longs with the pastoral, not with the Kingdom 
theory of the ministry. The right of every church 
to invite any man to officiate as its pastor is not 
to be denied, nor its right to call a council to or- 
dain a candidate. The Congregational churches 
may, indeed, prefer to retain this method of get- 
ting at the ordination of new men. But let us 
discharge our minds of the fiction that the mean- 
ing of this method is that ordination is the pre- 
rogative of a single church, a sacred part of its 
wonderful autonomy, while the cooperation of 
other churches in ordinatioi] is social courtesy 

[66] 



Ministerial Leadership 

and a good display of church fraternity. It is 
time to hold and practise the larger idea that 
the Congregational Church — Congregational 
Churches, if the phrase is preferred — provides 
itself, or themselves, with a ministry. The 
ordination of a candidate is the act of the Church 
at large, performed by the churches of a vicinage 
acting coordinately and representing not a single 
church but the denomination. Nor need we wait 
for the individual church to initiate the procedure 
and give the churches right and occasion to or- 
dain. Ordination should be by that body, namely, 
the local association of churches, to which we 
safely entrust the standing of ministers; and the 
association should be ready to meet for ordina- 
tion at the call of its own officers, upon the re- 
quest either of a local church or of the candidate 
himself. And even if ordination by a council of 
churches is still preferred, it should be as compe- 
tent and orderly for an association of churches 
as for a single church to call that council. The 
provision, be it repeated, of an unfailing line of 
men discharging the ministerial function in the 
Kingdom and the Church is the duty and pre- 
rogative of the Church, or of the churches cor- 
porately, not singly. 

This may sound heretical to many mature and 
ecclesiastically jealous Congregational ears. It 
may therefore be necessary to congregational 
protest once more that this is strategy 
not a process of Presbvterianizing the Con- 

[6 7 ] 



Congregational A dministration 

gregational ministry. It will not have es- 
caped attention that the self-control of each local 
church still remains uninvaded. Though the 
churches act corporately in filling the ranks of 
the ministry, they cannot thrust a single minister 
into the pastorate of any church or withdraw 
a pastor. Our ministers remain members of 
local churches and so are amenable to ordinary 
church discipline. A church is as free as ever 
to advance one of its own members for temporary 
service in its own pulpit, as free as ever to re- 
quest other churches to unite in ordaining a 
promising candidate. And ordination by local 
association, which will be brought forward in an- 
other lecture, is no less completely in the control 
of the churches than is ordination by council. 
The larger conception of the ministry does not 
elevate the ministry above the churches, nor give 
it power over the churches. And be it further 
protested that here is no attempt to produce a 
new conception of the Congregational ministry 
or to alter our Congregational practise. The at- 
tempt is to state clearly, albeit with cordial ap- 
proval, what is believed to be the increasing be- 
lief and practise, the truer and foreordained idea. 
It is offered, too, as a most significant element in 
our denominational reconstruction. The achieve- 
ment of a national unity involves such enlarged 
administration of the ministry. And there exists 
no more important point in Congregational states- 
manship. The welfare of our churches and the 

[ 68 ] ' 



Ministerial Leadership 

fruitage of their work depend under God upon 
their ministerial leadership. The full ranks, per- 
sonal quality and efficiency of that leadership de- 
pend upon the most commanding conception of 
it wrought out into the most liberal and engaging 
opportunity of service. Here is our supreme 
strategy. There is all to gain and nothing to 
lose in it. It makes for manhood, vision, power. 
The ministry wants, not to be carried, but to be 
challenged and enabled. There is no danger of 
enfeebling and pauperizing such a body of Christ- 
called men. Give them room and resources. 
Then make your scrutiny of candidates search- 
ing, your selection rigid, your demands heavy, 
the battle fierce all the day long, the sacrifice a 
whole burnt offering; these men will keep full 
ranks, will fight the fight, will finish the course, 
will keep the faith, — and with God be the rest ! 



[69] 



LECTURE II! 
FORMS OF LOCAL FELLOWSHIP 



Ill 

FORMS OF LOCAL FELLOWSHIP 

Essential Congregationalism resides in the 
local church. If we try to state our polity in a 
single sentence, we must affirm the native right of 
individual Christians to organize themselves into 
a church, sovereign in its private life and unit- 
ing with other sovereign churches in voluntary 
forms of fellowship and work. It is in the local 
church not as an isolated and self-sufficient in- 
teger, but as a social being and member of a body, 
that we find the essence of our Congregational 
order. Our tersest characterization must have 
room for our social forms. Rising thus in the 

local church and moving OUt- Distinctive Feature 

ward, our order is seen to dif- of congregational 
f er radically from polities whose ° l y 
essence lies in an authoritative hierarchy. But 
careful words are necessary to differentiate it 
from polities whose source and direction agree 
with ours. It is important to get into view, over 
against Presbyterianism for example, just what 
we must stand for and all we need to stand for. 
I should state this essential distinction thus : Con- 
gregationalism stands and must stand for direct 
democracy in the local church and absence of 
authority in the fellowship forms. Such double 
statement may seem to many unnecessary. It 
is admitted that either half involves the other. 

[73] 



Congrega tional A dministra Hon 

Direct democracy in the local church means free- 
dom from all coercion from above. The absence 
of authority from the whole fellowship system 
guarantees independent popular action in the local 
church. Yet it seems well to utter both points 
in a working statement of our polity. For we 
are self-conscious and distressed at both points. 
We have to lay stress, now on the one, and then 
on the other. A platform two planks deep feels 
firmer. 

The phrase, pure or direct democracy in the 
local church, may appear to miss the point. Our 
Local church a historic words have been "the 
pure Democracy aut onomy of the local church." We 
have meant by these words real and entire self- 
government. That has seemed the precise point 
to guard, the proud distinction of our democratic 
churches. Many are satisfied to assure the 
churches this freedom from outside interference. 
It matters not under what forms each sovereign 
church may conduct its private life. Dr. 
Mackennal deemed it sufficient, "if it be recog- 
nized that the government of each particular 
church is in its membership." Without obscur- 
ing this, may we not, in these days when our un- 
invaded self-control is secure, put our local life in 
some richer phrase, such as direct democracy ? An 
addition of meaning is not denied, is intended 
rather, but not a substitute principle; for the es- 
sence of democracy is free popular self-control. 
No attempt is made to alter Congregational prac- 

[74] 



Forms of Local Fellowship 

tise, but only to characterize it. As a matter of 
fact, bare autonomy has been our fighting line. 
Behind that line our church methods have agreed 
upon more than sheer freedom to do as each liked. 
If a church here and there chose to commit its 
annual procedure to an authoritative session, the 
rest of us did not count that good Congregation- 
alism ; it was, so far forth, straight Presbyterian- 
ism in local administration ; it delegated authority 
out of the hands of the people. We, the onlook- 
ers, took refuge in the principle of auton- 
omy, initiated no action against that church, and 
waited for time; but we were not satisfied. It 
was a case of autonomy, but it was not good 
Congregationalism. 

It is now entirely safe to withdraw all but the 
sentinels from the fighting line of bare autonomy. 

We COUld throw the total force More Than Bare 

back there, armed cap-a-pie, at a Autonomy 
bugle call, but it is cold ground to hold idly night 
and day. In inside practise we stand for that which 
is signified by the phrase "direct democracy." 
The Congregational churches are those which do 
as they like, indeed, with none to say them nay, 
but which like to handle local affairs by direct 
popular action. We are used to membership 
franchise and universal participation in church 
administration. We call our important business 
meetings according to legal forms; other meet- 
ings we convene informally, perhaps at the close 
of midweek prayer meetings. In all cases we, 

[75] 



Congregational Administration 

the people, do business at first-hand on the basis 
of equal rights and duties. This is not other than 
autonomy; it is more than autonomy. It is the 
Congregational practise of autonomy. This ad- 
dition to bare autonomy deserves to be inserted 
in our statement of Congregational principles 
and our characterization of Congregational prac- 
tise. It is too central to be omitted. It ought 
also to be contended for, and restored wherever 
impaired. There are one or two lapses from it 
which may be mentioned here. 

In the first place our direct democracy too often 
suffers at the hands of pastors or standing com- 
Autocratic mittees. It is easy for some pastors to 
officials m ake themselves almost the whole 
thing, the sole administrators — in blunt term, 
autocrats. Many cases of such autocracy are but 
mildly guilty, the church not only making no 
outcry, but welcoming the relief. There are, 
however, heinous cases of tyranny on the part 
of strong men who are determined to have their 
way. All pastors should remember that the peo- 
ple rule in our polity, and the people should suffer 
no pastor to forget. The Congregational pastor 
is neither ruler nor hired servant. He should 
neither lord it over the flock, nor do their work 
for them at market-place wages for a definite 
time. He is the elected leader, whose duty is to 
lead and train. He will do well to have con- 
spicuous among his working principles this one, 
that he will do nothing which he can get any one 

[76] 



Forms of Local Fellowship 

else to do. It is his business to secure the widest 
distribution and most effective discharge of Chris- 
tian service and church administration. The 
church well-trained and led, feels no sense of 
helplessness when it sorowfully surrenders its 
pastor to another field. 

Scarcely less uncongregational and undemo- 
cratic is the assumed domination of a church com- 
mittee. A recent case of it has been reported to 
be as flagrant as this, that the decision of a board 
of trustees was enforced against the majority ac- 
tion of the church. Responsibility for such an 
offense must be divided between the board that 
arrogated the authority and the church that suf- 
fered them to do so. No Congregational church 
should allow any issue to be carried beyond its 
own immediate reach or counter to its own de- 
cision. Nor should any pastor or church officer 
ever try to thwart the popular will or to proceed 
without it. 

The other impairment of our direct democracy 
is the ecclesiastical society. How this arose out 
of the early union of Church and Ecclesiastical 
State, and how it has persisted in Societ y 
New England, though hardly known from the 
Hudson River to the Pacific, need not be related. 
This parish system withdrew secular affairs from 
the management of the church into the control 
of a small body of men who might or might not 
be members of the church. Too* often, in the 
Unitarian controversy which smote New Eng- 

177] 



Congregational A dministration 

land, they were not members. The church had 
no standing before the law; legally the society 
was the church. The great majority of church- 
members were thus debarred from exercising in 
a main section of church affairs their native right 
to handle their own business. A curious paradox 
appeared here. The original contention that citi- 
zens of a town should not be taxed for the min- 
ister's salary without being represented in the 
business of the church led to the debarment of 
the great majority of contributing church-mem- 
bers — all the women and many of the men — 
in order to admit into business management the 
few men who were contributors without being 
church-members. 

Relief has come through laws in all the states 
providing for the direct incorporation and legal 
standing of the church, with the consequent con- 
trol of all its business. Under this provision the 
transfer from the society to the incorporated 
church has proceeded slowly. I am interested 
now, not in presenting the actual situation, 
but in urging that this parish system is a 
serious impairment of that direct democracy 
which is our very life and to which we insist upon 
conforming our Congregational order. A church 
is competent indeed to commit its affairs to a 
small body of inside and outside males called the 
society, or to continue to leave its affairs in their 
historic hands. It is the way in which our New 
England churches have actually been compelled 

[78] 



Forms of Local Fellowship 

to live. But it is not proper Congregationalism ; 
it is a weakness in the very citadel of power, the 
local church. It is to the honor of our Congre- 
gational character that damage so slight and in- 
frequent has resulted from a dual system of which 
it has been forcibly said, "No other churches 
anywhere, under any polity, were ever more 
completely in subjection to a power largely 
outside and independent of themselves. . . . 
The result of union with the State was that 
the Church was bereft of liberty and independent 
life." x 

Turn now to the other half of our statement 
of essential Congregationalism, namely, the ab- 
sence Of authority from OUr Authority Absent from 
fellowship forms, Or the SUb- Congregational 

stitution of public opinion for e ows p 
authority in those forms. This may seem to be 
the main point in our polity and the best way to 
put it. We have been very assertive of local in- 
dependence. Such assertion of right often sounds 
combative; it certainly has often been divisive 
among brethren. Is it not preferable to use a 
phrase which faces the other way? Absence of 
authority from our fellowship forms is a 
joint phrase. We utter it together in that cor- 
porate capacity against which our churches have 
hurled their bolts of autonomy. It affirmatively 
disavows that dread monster, authority. It 
frankly adopts public opinion as its working 
1 Ross, Church Kingdom, pp. 331, 332. 

[79] 



Congregational Administration 

force. It leaves the local church secure in free- 
dom and democracy. This is all that our 
churches demand. This being assured, based 
upon our mutual trust, we are ready to develop 
our voluntary fellowship forms unto full effi- 
ciency. We never have been unwilling to frame 
the larger union and perform the wider service; 
we have only waited to be sure of our way. 
Agreeing that our larger life is to be void of 
coercion, we hesitate no longer, as is shown by 
the universal interest now given to administrative 
reorganization. 

Note, then, our present problem in terms of 
our two main principles, independence and fel- 

independence in lowship. The former is as price- 
Local Field j ess as ever? but it is finally an d 

forever secure. Its sphere and scope have shrunk 
in our modern social conditions, though the in- 
terests which lie therein never can lose their pri- 
macy. The inmost parts of the spiritual service 
which produces individual salvation and parish 
ministration continue to be discharged by the 
churches one by one. Our combined work rests 
heavily upon that which the churches must con- 
tinue to do mainly alone. 

The limits, however, of the strictly local field 
are suprisingly narrow. Cooperation has now 
a large place, even in the spiritual work just re- 
ferred to. Revival work is now largely done in 
cooperation. No large city should remain un- 
provided with a federated parish system resem- 

[go] 



Forms of Local Fellowship 

bling that of the New York City Federation. And 
when you think of it, how little can a local church 
properly do in entire disregard of the common 
good! All private affairs are matters of com- 
mon concern. The election of a pastor or a dea- 
con, the budget for the new year, plans of local 
work — all such things affect the sisterhood of 
churches. And that church is contributing most 
to the Kingdom which in all these things called 
local and private is sensitive to the wider interests 
and needs. 

Beyond the circumscribed local activities, 
which are properly left to each church alone, 

Stretches away the common field Cooperation Beyond 

which must be worked in union. Local Field 
Just here occurs the mistake. Too often our in- 
dependence has meant the right to work our sep- 
arate wills out in the larger domain. It was 
natural enough, for our church work was obliged 
to begin and continue long without ways 
for laboring together. But that time is now 
past. We agree that the local organization and 
most of the parish ministration are best handled 
by the single church. Let each church continue 
to elect its own officers, care for its own property, 
and sustain the various forms of worship and 
helpfulness. But out in the larger region, in the 
affairs which cover a city, a county, a state, a 
great section, or the whole country — out there, 
what right has a church to do its separate will? 
It was Dr. Ouint, one of our ablest ecclesi- 
[81] 



Congregation al A dministration 

asticians, who said, "It is manifest that no church 
can rightly assume to do, without consultation, 
what may affect the character and work of the 
churches in general/' * There still are pastors 
and churches declining to cooperate in plans that 
would adequately cover a city, persistently turn- 
ing their sole and singular work out into the 
city wherever they choose with small regard to 
fellow laborers. In one of our strategic centers 
the pastor of a leading church has consistently 
declined parish cooperation. He said recently 
to a brother pastor, "I propose to attend strictly 
to my own church, and I advise you to do the 
same." Such independence, persisting in separ- 
ate action, is now outdated. The social age is 
in full swing. Without losing individual initia- 
tive we must unite. Without neglecting the 
strictly local work we must organize our churches 
for effective labor in the wider field. Out there 
independence must yield to fellowship. Minis- 
ters must learn to be colleagues and colaborers. 
Churches must learn the same lesson. Our pres- 
ent concern is not the safeguarding of independ- 
ence, but the development of fellowship. 

The problem of the hour may be stated thus : 
Given independence, how much fellowship can 

How Much we develop ? There have been times 
Fellowship when duty faced the other way . Giyen 

a fair measure of fellowship, how can we se- 
curely establish independence? Until freedom 
1 Dunning's Congregationalisfs in America, p. 494. 

[82] 



Forms of Local Fellowship 

is won, all sacrifice must serve it, all other good 
must wait. Fellowship is the greater good, but 
only if it be of freemen. The field has swept on- 
ward. Sacrifice now belongs to fellowship. In- 
dependence must not be impaired; it never will 
be. We are free and independent churches. 
How much can we rejoice in one another? How 
much can we do in union ? How shall we freely 
organize in order to manifold our service to the 
Kingdom ? All would work our grandly if Con- 
gregationalists would unanimously adopt this so- 
cial purpose, would take local independence for 
granted, would quietly sustain their local life, 
and would turn their main administrative atten- 
tion to fellowship. We should find the wisest 
forms and methods, and our missionary work 
would leap forward. Any one familiar with our 
state meetings or our National Council can pre- 
dict the relief and the release of energy, if all 
should sit together taking freedom for granted, 
too sure of it to assert it, trusting one another 
without suspicion, absorbed in love and strategy. 
"It is time," writes another, "to answer the ques- 
tion, Upon what terms is it possible for Congre- 
gationalism to become a manifested power? 
But that can never be till we have learned that 
independency is not an ultimate object, but only 
the means to a higher end." * 

Proceeding from the local church into our 
fellowship forms, the ministerial association may 
1 Macfadyen, Constructive Congregational Ideals* p. 59. 

[83] 



Congregational Administration 

claim a passing notice. It might be called, as it 
has been, a voluntary social club, without admin- 
Ministerial i strati ve significance, save for the im- 
Associations portant f act that it has held in its 

hand, to the present hour in some sections, prime 
interests of the churches, namely, the licensure 
of candidates and the standing of ministers. As 
long as this is so, every member is responsible 
to the association for his ministerial character 
and the association must answer to the churches 
for all its members. A body with such respon- 
sibilities cannot be called a social club, and must 
not decline to hold its members to moral and 
professional standards. But, being a purely min- 
isterial body, it never can properly represent 
democratic churches. Beyond New England it 
has small place in the denomination. In many 
localities it has never existed; elsewhere it has 
disbanded or been merged with Monday minis- 
ters' meetings. "Ministerial associations/' wrote 
Dr. Ross, "are temporary in our polity. They 
were the stepping-stones in this country between 
the independency which relied on the State and 
associations of independent churches. They se- 
cure the fellowship of the clergy, not of the 
churches, except through their pastors." l 

The association or conference of churches, on 

the other hand, is taking its place at the head 

of our line of fellowship. It is truly and closely 

representative of the churches. It is the churches 

1 Ross, Church Kingdom, p. 294. 

[84] 



Forms of Local Fellowship 

of a convenient vincinage organized together and 
meeting by elected delegates for mutual help and 
united labor. The members of the Associations 
association are the churches ; the indi- of Churches 
vidual delegates are simply members of the meet- 
ing. Here commences our indirect or representa- 
tive democracy. Not until the nineteenth century 
came the hour of association of churches. They 
would have arisen in the seventeenth century 
save for opposition by the ministry. In 1641 
Massachusetts Colony adopted a code of laws 
permitting both ministerial and church associa- 
tions. In 1662 its legislature ordered a synod 
to settle, among other questions, this : "Whether, 
according to the Word of God, there ought to 
be a consociation of churches, and what should 
be the manner of it," "This question/' say 
the Colonial Records, "was unfortunately 
returned to the Secretary of State by the 
elders." "The elders stifled this attempt of 
the laymen for church association," is a later 
comment. 

The association of churches at once approved 
itself and spread rapidly. It now covers all our 
churches. And so true is it to Congregational- 
ism, that its function has been steadily enlarged, 
till it has come to be our pivotal fellowship body. 
As concerns service in the Kingdom of God, the 
association's field remains small; our extensive 
ministries must go through state and national 
organizations. But as concerns orderly and re- 

[85] 



Congregational Administration 

sponsible organization, for both safety and sig- 
nificance, the local association is for the present 
the most important of our fellowship bodies. I 
would therefore bespeak for it the unfailing in- 
terest of churches and ministers. Because the 
association is the churches in immediate organi- 
zation, able to report and appeal instantly back 
to the churches, liable to be called to prompt ac- 
count by the churches, prepared to carry out the 
will of the churches into wider fields of fellow- 
ship, it is both safe and important to magnify 
this body. 

In its enlarging scope and function the asso- 
ciation is charged first with the welfare of its 
welfare of own churches. Our churches have 
its churches feen deserted by one another. Our 
independence has been shamefully unfraternal. 
Under our competitive system hundreds of our 
churches can barely make a living; some that 
ought not to fail starve to death. Some, badly 
located or abandoned by the currents of social 
life, ought to remove or disband. Some that 
are doing noble work might be helped to multi- 
ply the service and increase the joy. Our 
churches are slow to learn what it means to be 
members one of another. 

Included in the association's duty is the reli- 
gious condition of the county or district, so 
far as this belongs to Congregationalists. The 
question is, What is our part in the religious 
welfare of this district, and how shall our 

[86] 



Forms of Local Fellowship 

churches, organized in the association, perform 
their part? Enter here the duties of church ex- 
tension and evangelization. Church Extension 
Why Should a new Church be and Evangelization 

formed when and where a few individuals would 
like to have it? Every Congregationalist church 
in the district is affected by each new church or- 
ganized. The latter will draw members from one 
and another church, and probably will appeal to 
the churches singly and to the Home Missionary 
Society for financial aid. It is time all over the 
land for church extension to proceed upon advice 
and cooperation, and for the power of Christ 
to be carried throughout a city or a county by 
the united churches. Bay Association of 
Churches in California covers a large county, in- 
cluding the cities of Berkeley, Oakland, and 
Alameda. New Haven West Association in 
Connecticut covers the city and county of New 
Haven. These bodies are competent to spread 
the united power of all the Congregational 
churches over the spiritual needs of those coun- 
ties. I do not, of course, forget specially organ- 
ized church extension societies and city mission 
societies, which have the advantage of restricted 
aim and special pleading. But I believe that the 
associations of churches can well handle such 
work until the local fields grow so dense as to 
require separate organizations. 

For this work of church welfare and exten- 
sion an advisory, prudential or missionarv com- 

[8 7 ] 



Congregational Administration 

mittee of the association is sufficient. One such 
association acts through a prudential committee, 
Prudential or whose function is described as fol- 
Advisory lows in the constitution : "It shall be 

committees the duty of the p ru dential Committee 
to promote the welfare and fellowship of the 
churches of this association in all possible ways, 
and especially as follows: (a) To consider the 
opportunities, responsibilities and resources of 
the churches of this association, and to study the 
whole field with reference to the best distribution 
and employment of forces; (b) To receive any 
requests for counsel, to offer advice in needy 
and difficult cases, and when necessary to report 
to the association ways and means for meeting 
such cases and execute the association's pro- 
visions for relief; (c) To initiate and report plans 
for new enterprises and forward movements, in 
short, all that pertains to the extension of 
Christ's kingdom throughout the county. And 
to make its work effective the Prudential Com- 
mittee is hereby empowered by the churches 
through the association to assume from year to 
year whatever financial responsibility may be 
necessary." This particular committee has led 
the association to serve the churches in several 
important advances, such as the union of two 
churches, the erection of a new meeting-house, 
the purchase of a parsonage, the organization 
and housing of a new church, tKe removal of 
a church to a better site — these along with 

[88] 



Forms of Local Fellowship 

lesser acts of helpfulness and a constant brooding 
watch-care over the churches in their united 
fields. The committee answers every call upon 
its service and is expected to proffer advice and 
initiate work at its discretion. It would be hard 
for men who appreciate the labor of such a com- 
mittee to think any association in the country 
well off without one, or in lack of some adequate 
provision for such service. 

Another charge upon the local association is 
the orderly standing of churches and ministers. 
Dr. Quint wrote: "No Congrega- standing of 
tional church is independent. It can churches and 
become so by withdrawing from its Mlnisters 
affiliations with the other churches, but in that 
case it ceases to be a part of the Congregational 
body." The Council Manual, issued by the 
National Council as its expression of Congrega- 
tional organization, explicitly includes member- 
ship in a local association as requisite for a 
church which would secure and maintain Con- 
gregational character and standing. Every Con- 
gregational church is thus amenable to the de- 
nomination, and every association is responsible 
for the good standing of its churches. The same 
is true of every Congregational minister. His 
good name and commendation to the churches 
used to be in the hands of ordaining, installing 
and dismissing councils. In the decline of in- 
stallation, ministerial standing has passed over to 
1 Dunning's Congregationalists in America, p. 492. 

[89] 



Congregational A dministration 

the associations of churches. We have reached 
such proportions that we can secure good order 
in no less methodical way. The National Coun- 
cil has affirmed the conditions of ministerial 
standing to be threefold : 

(i) Membership in a Congregational church; 

(2) Ordination to the Christian ministry; 

(3) Membership in that body, in most states 

the local association of churches, which 

holds the standing of ministers. 

Now for the safe and orderly procedure of our 

denominational life throughout this great coun- 

T . A . M try this matter of the good stand- 
Local Association . J & . 

Eesponsibie for ing of churches and ministers is 
Good standing extremely important and gives 
prominence to the fellowship body charged with 
it. I believe that we are wise in laying it upon 
a local body, composed of the churches and min- 
isters themselves, closely conversant with all per- 
sonal character and church conditions, meeting 
regularly and as a matter of course, easily meet- 
ing in special session either to correct irregular- 
ities or to perform specific tasks. The State con- 
ference is less suited to be the custodian of min- 
isterial and church standing. Nor is there any 
local body adequate to bear this obligation save 
the association of churches. The council is fugi- 
tive, while these responsibilities are permanent. 
The ministerial association is limited to the 
clergy, while these responsibilities pertain to the 
churches inclusive of the clergy. The National 

[90] 



Forms of Local Fellowship 

Council recommended that all local associations 
of churches so amend their constitutions as to 
provide for ministerial standing, and that all 
ministerial associations turn their members over 
to the church bodies. The transfer is already 
well-nigh universal. 

There is one new feature in the possible scope 
and function of the association of churches which 
I desire to join with Mr. Heermance ordination by 
and others in advocating. It is the Association 
ordination of ministers. It seems to some like 
red revolution to carry over ordination from the 
time-honored council to the upstart association. 
But there are reason and good order in it. In 
our Congregational history ordination by other 
bodies than the council is far from unknown, 
while at present there is a distinct trend toward 
the association of churches. Several State bodies 
have recommended it in whole or in part. And 
those who have considered it and seen it work 
cannot help believing that it will gradually win 
its way. It cannot be forced. Those who prefer 
ordination by council are as free as ever to em- 
ploy that method. The change must come as a 
recognized improvement. 

It is evident at a glance that ordination by an 
association of churches is good Congregational 
ordination. No man ordained by The Best 
such a body would have his minis- 0rdainin * Bo & 
terial standing questioned anywhere in the land. 
The association is a better body than the council 

[91] 



Congregational Administration 

for this service, inasmuch as it includes all the 
churches of the vicinage and has permanent life 
and records, Having more time and repeated 
sessions for its business, with standing officers t 
and commitees, it is less likely than a council to 
perform a mistaken ordination, while it is always 
at hand to correct such an error. 

"Over some case of ministerial delinquency or 
impotence we ask, Who ordained this man? A 
council in northeastern Maine or southwestern 
California. Write that council and charge back 
its blunder upon it; bid it recall those ordination 
papers and terminate the mischievous or in- 
effective career. Impossible; the deed was done 
by an agency irresponsible, because too short- 
lived to be brought to an account, created for the 
work of an hour with endless consequences, and 
falling apart beyond recall before sunset. It gave 
the ordained man the sole copy of credentials, 
good for a lifetime, to the ends of the Congre- 
gational earth and beyond. It sent no records 
to a responsible custodian. And yet there is a 
thoroughly Congregational and representative 
body, dignified, stable, inclusive of all the neigh- 
boring churches and ministers and responsible 
for all, possessing all the prerogatives and ma- 
chinery for ordination. It writes such deeds in 
permanent records. It is more cautious, because 
it studies constantly the interests intrusted to it, 
and because it must answer any day for the deeds 
it has done. It can be called together as readily 

[92] 



Forms of Locap 'Fellowship 

as a council. Holding stated meetings, it need 
not for every case be called in extra session." 

The main objection to ordination by associa- 
tion of churches, aside from sentimental devotion 
to the council, is a fear of some encroachment 
upon the liberties of the churches. Let us con- 
tinue to ordain, say the fearful, by the council 
which disbands at once ; let us not trust this prin- 
cipal matter in the hands of a permanent body 
able to act repeatedly; independence is endan- 
gered by a permanent body. That general 
proposition is, I trust, being sufficiently argued 
in these lectures. To make a stand on ordina- 
tion seems to me peculiarly inapt. There can 
be no threat upon liberty at this point ; it is too 
brief and fleeting. Time is a necessary element 
in tyranny. Ordination is done and past in a 
day, else a council never could perform it. It 
passes over into permanent ministerial standing; 
in that there is time for tyranny. 3 

Suffer another moment's emphasis upon our 
present management of the life of our ministry. 
Licensure, or approbation to preach, The Life of 
is in the hands of the association of 0ur Ministr y 
churches or ministers. Ministerial standing, as 
a permanent holding, is in the same hands. Cer- 
tification of that standing is therefore given at 
any time by the association, and the council is 
no longer depended on for a minister's creden- 
tials. Virtual deposition from the ministry for 
sufficient cause is in the same associational 

[93] 



Congregational "Administration 

hands; for while technical deposition is held by 
a council, the refusal of an association to sustain 
longer a minister's membership and standing 
locks him, and ought to lock him, out of our pul- 
pits. It has always been next to impossible to 
secure formal deposition by a council; it is now 
rendered unnecessary by the normal working of 
ministerial standing in the association of 
churches. Thus that body presides over the 
whole extent of a minister's professional life, his 
ordination alone excepted. At that juncture we 
turn to the council, as though to say that we will 
not entrust with this man's ordination the body 
to which we commit his entire career, though 
that body be composed of the very churches 
which must in any case perform his ordination. 
Safety, consistency, fitness and all the values of 
good order should, and I believe will, transfer 
ordination to the association's hands. And this 
is another argument for locating the whole proc- 
ess of ministerial standing in associations of 
churches instead of associations of ministers. 

It remains to suggest that many other things 
hitherto performed by the council would often 

other Functions be d ? ne more appropriately and 
for the effectively by the association of 

Association churches. The installation or dis- 

missal of a pastor, the organization or migration 
of a church, the union of two churches, many 
appeals for advice and material assistance, coun- 
sel upon cases of discipline pr business difficulty 

[94] 



Forms of Local Fellowship 

— such things belong more fitly to the associa- 
tion with its system of meetings and records, of- 
ficers and committees. For, be it said for the 
smaller churches and their pastors who shrink 
from pressing their desires and rights, it is a main 
weakness of our council system that it assembles 
the "leading churches" and "leading pastors," 
seldom including those who would most appre- 
ciate participation in ecclesiastical affairs. These 
fellowship functions are occasions of growth and 
brotherly love, as well as service. It is neither 
fraternity nor strategy to magnify an agency 
which in the human nature of the case leaves 
many churches and pastors out in the cold, year 
after year. Moreover, most of these denomina- 
tional occasions concern the whole circle of the 
vicinage, small and large churches alike. It is 
both good Christianity and good democracy to 
substitute the association of churches for the 
council in these denominational activities. The 
transfer would be one more step in simplifying 
and strengthening our polity. 

What, then, of the Council, our true and tried 
servant, our familiar friend, our Congregational 
way, the habit of three hundred Permanent scope 
years — what of this? No dis- of the Council 
honor will be shown it in the change. So useful 
an agency is it that we should be entirely un- 
willing to deprive ourselves of it. It is admitted 
that some occasions for fellowship can be better 
served by a council than by an association. Rep- 

[95] 



Congregational Administration 

resentatives from a larger neighborhood, even 
from beyond state boundaries, are sometimes 
needed, as in an extreme case of discipline or 
financial distress. I have known a council to be 
preferred for the good reason that the larger body 
could not be entertained in the small meeting- 
house. And a case frequently arises of such 
length, delicacy or complexity as to require a 
small and select council. 

Beyond these ordinary uses, however, the coun- 
cil has in our practise of the Congregational pol- 
court of ity a special function which assures it 
Last Resort Riding honor. For this function I like 
the brief, trim phrase, "court of last resort/' To 
this title Mr. Heermance and others object, with- 
out suggesting another equally terse and ade- 
quate. Having dismissed authority from our 
total system, and having committed our decision 
to rational constraint by public opinion, it would 
seem as if no phrases could threaten our serenity. 
But in whatever terms stated, the provision is a 
real Congregational distinction and protection. 
We must always have some recourse from mis- 
takes and injustice. If a church, for example, or 
a minister has just complaint against the decision 
of the association of which either is a member, 
an appeal must be within reach to a judicatory, 
regarded superior, because more disinterested, 
because concentrated upon the one issue, and be- 
cause advantaged by information of the former 
trial. Refuge has not always been found in a 

[96] 



Forms of Local Fellowship 

council. In early days resort was had to town 
officers or the state legislature. In the consoci- 
ational days in Connecticut an appeal from one 
consociation might be presented to a neighboring 
one in joint session; if the two decisions coin- 
cided, they constituted a doubly final and author- 
itative settlement of the case. Both these lines 
of appeal have disappeared. We look to the State 
no longer, save in legal complications. Nor do 
we appeal from one association or conference to 
another, expecting the two to play a drawn game 
or enforce a joint decree. Least of all do we 
think of carrying our appeals up to state or 
national bodies. To these we give no legislative 
or judicial functions, and to them present no 
such business. We thus have no ascending ju- 
dicial system, such as would remove our difficult 
cases from the vincinage to distant judgment- 
seats. On the contrary, we carry our appeals 
directly back to the local churches. Our resort is 
to a council, that familiar immediate represen- 
tative of the churches, whose nature is to utter 
the best available judgment of the churches, and 
leave it to be enforced by its inherent reason and 
public opinion. If we need a safeguard against 
other polities, here is one. The Presbyterian 
may carry his troubles up the line, to presbytery, 
synod and assembly, and accept the results form- 
ulated in the distant judicatories. The Congre- 
gationalist turns back to the local churches whose 
fraternal advice is his final dependence. As long 

[97] 



Congregational Administration 

as this method of appeal stands, a drift into other 
polities is blocked. Equally blocked is a tendency 
into any sort of perilous centralization. We may 
freely develop the local association, only keeping 
the council behind it as court of appeal. This 
turn is pivotal in our polity; upon it we swing 
back to the pro re nata action of the churches. 
And should the council come to be mainly limited 
to this function of appeal, it would therein retain 
eminence and power such as should satisfy its 
most jealous advocates. 

Returning now to the association of churches, 
let me for a moment urge the importance of 
uniform agreeing upon a uniform terminol- 

Terminology ogy The National Council has 

recommended that our local organizations of 
churches take the name "association," and our 
state bodies be called "Conferences." This is a 
subordinate but not trivial matter. An incon- 
sistent terminology causes confusion in any de- 
partment of thought or action. Science corrects 
it at every discoverable point. So does practical 
wisdom, bent upon improving methods and pro- 
ducing results. These are days of the constant 
migration of pastors and church-members. Their 
familiarity with our working terms and methods 
affects efficiency. These facts, plus the increas- 
ing administrative significance of our ecclesiasti- 
cal bodies, argue the importance of uniform 
features and phraseology. In its main lines our 
work is one and the same throughout the land. 

[98] 



Forms of Local Fellowship 

Local variety is required only in minor details. 
Preference for our inherited names is natural 
enough, but unworthy to stand against our desire 
for united power. 

In such ways as have now been indicated, our 
local fellowship is being shaped. The trend all 
over the country is to magnify the local associa- 
tion, composed of the churches themselves in 
immediate union for the common work of the 
vicinage. Here, close to the separate churches, 
in their first organized body, we find the safest 
basis of good order. Here we fear no danger to 
our liberties, for these are the very churches 
whose liberties are precious. Here we have an 
agency adequate to meet -the conditions of the 
local field, competent also to enter those wider 
relations which remain to be considered. 



[99] 



LECTURE IV 
STATE UNIFICATION 



IV 

STATE UNIFICATION 

The state is as natural a district for religious 
as for civil organization. Interests and activities 
of the churches too large for our local associa- 
tions, yet too restricted for national administra- 
tion, we handle statewise. Thus we have a state 
organization in every state and two in California. 
They have been styled conferences or associations 
or conventions. To secure a uniform termin- 
ology the name "conference/ ' recommended by 
the National Council, is being gradually adopted. 

The membership of both local associations 
and state conferences, which may be discussed 
as one question, presents difficulties Local and state 
requiring thought and experiment. Membershi P 
The present variety is confusing. In some cases, 
local or state, the membership is limited to 
churches, these being represented in the meetings 
by pastors as such and elected delegates. In 
other cases ministers, whether pastors or not, 
have personal membership, with or without vot- 
ing rights; this membership, as held and inter- 
preted in local associations, constituting their 
ministerial standing. There are state bodies 
which determine their own membership inde- 
pendently, as of course they are free to do, while 
others base their membership upon the local as- 
sociation. Now similar to that regarding termin- 

[ I03 ] 



Congregational Administration 

°logy, though much more cogent here, is the 
argument for uniformity. Not until we have 
achieved it, can a minister or active layman, re- 
moving from one state to another, enter upon his 
new relations unconfused. 

The first question concerns the duties and 
prerogatives connected with ministerial standing. 
Ministerial Shall the minister's connection with 
Membership and a local association of churches, 
standing which he is obliged to secure and 

keep unsullied, be reckoned as membership? If 
so, what kind of membership, entitled to what 
privileges, and charged with what duties? If not 
membership, what is it? Can so vital and re- 
sponsible a connection, involving discipline for 
cause, be ordered and insisted upon without being 
accorded the status of membership? Ministerial 
standing is coordinate with the standing of a 
church; if the latter involves full membership in 
an association, with voting rights in all meetings, 
should the former be limited to less? In this 
matter is it right to reckon a minister as no more 
than an individual church-member? The local 
association is the body in and through which de- 
nominational administration is carried on; shall 
a minister have no participation in administration 
save as a church-member occasionally elected as 
delegate to an association meeting? If a larger 
share is just or desirable, is it sufficient to give 
him an associate or honorary membership, with 
all rights save that of voting? 
[ ^04] 



State Unification 

Three practises now in vogue among us may 
be stated as follows: — (a) in some associations 
all ministers hold personal voting membership; 
(b) in other associations there is no ministerial 
membership, but pastors are ex officio delegates 
and voting members of the meetings; other min- 
isters have no place in any meeting save as duly 
elected delegates of churches; (c) in still other 
associations even pastors hold no ex officio place 
in the meetings, but must be elected as delegates. 

It is easy to object to any one of these arrange- 
ments, but the most just and consistent solution 
does not instantly appear. Ministerial a Difficult 
membership, giving each minister, solution 
whether pastor or not, voting rights in every 
meeting, puts a minister on a par with a church, 
gives him undue prominence in the meetings and 
the organization generally, and introduces a 
double and disparate membership. On the other 
hand, to refuse ministerial membership is liable 
to injustice. For the minister, not the pastor 
only, is held under responsibilities peculiar to 
him, not shared by any layman, shared only by a 
church. We Congregationalists — and freemen 
generally — have a very vital rubric entitled 
"taxation without representation." We feel like 
insisting in simple justice that one who is held to 
unique accountability must be given unique rights 
in the organization which holds him. 

There are times when ordinary injustice at 
this point would be magnified into grievous 

f ">5 1 



Congregational A dministration 

wrong. The discipline of a minister as church- 
member belongs in the church which holds his 
Complicated by membership. But his discipline as 
Discipline minister belongs in the associa- 

tion which holds his standing. It is a grave 
question whether he ought to be held amenable 
to disciplinary action by a body in which voting 
membership is denied him, and in which his 
fellow ministers, likewise excluded from mem- 
bership, have no right to give judgment in his 
trial. Discipline for delinquency reveals the dis- 
parity between minister and lay delegate; the 
latter the association cannot call to account, his 
case lying totally within his own church. If 
you surrender the associational discipline of min- 
isters, you do indeed remove that difference be- 
tween them and lay delegates, but you also throw 
out the real values of ministerial standing. Un- 
less the rolls are kept purged of delinquents, it 
is worth nothing to stand in the lists. It is a 
good thing to withdraw the special privileges 
formerly accorded to the clergy and hold them 
to the common standards of manhood and social 
order. But when the question concerns their 
professional responsibilities, you will find neither 
ministers nor laymen willing to reduce the craft 
to the lay level or refuse it the standing commen- 
surate with its obligations. Between such depre- 
ciation and the segregation of ministers as a 
class or order in their own exclusive associations, 
where the church cannot pass upon their pro- 
[106] 



State Unification 

fessional standing, there is safe middle ground. 
The double membership of churches and minis- 
ters disturbs very little the thought of the 
churches, and introduces no disorder into cur- 
rent affairs. If, however, complete ministerial 
membership should upon discussion be refused, 
then the ex officio standing of pastors in the 
association meetings has not a little in its favor. 
I believe that, thinking this matter out through 
some years of experiment, churches and ministers 
will agree upon the justice and desirability of 
safeguarding the rights and obligations pertain- 
ing to ministerial membership. If it come to be 
regarded as a special privilege, it will go and 
ought to go. If it turn out to be justice and a 
true way of sustaining the high character and se- 
curing the full service of our ministry, it will be 
retainecj. 

A further inquiry concerns the membership 
of the state conference, and particularly its rela- 
tion to that of the local aSSOcia- state conference 

tions within the state. At present versus Association 

i* i • rr r* 1 Membership 

conferences differ. Some admit 
every pastor as one of the representatives of his 
church, but no ministers on any other terms. 
Michigan, Wisconsin, Nebraska, California and 
others admit as members coordinate with the 
churches all ministers who are members of local 
associations within the state. This introduces 
the dual membership again, the voters in all 
meetings being ministers as such and delegates of 

[io 7 ] 



Congregational Administration 

churches. What these states seem to mean is' 
this : Admitting the right of the state conference 
to determine its own membership, it is thought 
wiser to base it directly and completely upon 
membership in local associations. Upon this is 
founded majority membership in the National 
Council. It is consistent and practical for the 
state body also to rest its membership upon the 
local bodies. The states just named are saying 
that their state conference membership shall con- 
sist of all the churches and all the ministers 
named in the lists of their local associations. 
The purpose evidently is to assemble the total 
recognized forces of the state, to apply the total 
available power at this pivotal point between local 
and national forms of work. 

Conceivably it may still be asked why the state 
conference should, in constituting its member- 
Hiffher Memberships ship, refer at all to the local 
Best on Good standing associations. The answer is, 
Because our Congregational practise leaves in the 
associations the determination of the good stand- 
ing which consists in membership acquired and 
retained. The state conference, the national so- 
cieties, and the National Council then accept the 
matter of membership as settled and adjust their 
practise thereto. The question then becomes one 
as to representation in these higher bodies. And 
the two classes to be represented are : — ( I ) 
churches and (2) ministers, the whole number of 
the latter as an ordained ministry, not merely the 
[108] 



State Unification 

major fraction of them as pastors. Our organific 
direction, as considered in the first lecture, is 
from below upward. The single church is first. 
The churches organize the local association, and 
make it the corner-stone of our fellowship struc- 
ture. The churches carry up to the state confer- 
ence nothing which the smaller bodies can bear 
just as well. And the churches carry on to the 
national bodies only the still wider interests com- 
mon to the states. It is admitted, of course, that 
these adjustments are still sub judice; all meth- 
ods always are in Congregationalism. But these 
are present phases and attempted interpretations. 
The wisest structural details will seasonably an- 
swer our united inquiries. And the denser states 
whose state meetings tend toward an unmanage- 
ably large membership, may make special contri- 
butions toward the solutions. 

Beyond membership come the two main mat- 
ters of all — state unification and state superin- 
tendence. Consider first the unifying state 
of our total Congregational organ- vmfloation 
ization with its agencies and labors in each state. 
The National Council at its Cleveland meet- 
ing recommended as follows : — "That the state 
organizations become legally incorporated bod- 
ies; and that under a general superintendent 
and such boards as they may create, and acting 
in cooperation with committees of local associa- 
tions and churches, they provide for and direct 
the extension of church work, the planting of 
[ 109] 



Congregation al Administration 

churches, the mutual oversight and care of all 
self-sustaining as well as missionary churches, 
and other missionary and church activities, to the 
end that closer union may ensure greater ef- 
ficiency without curtailing local independence." 
Action of this sort had been begun in several 
states prior to the Cleveland meeting, and since 
then has been accelerated and extended. Michi- 
gan was the first state to formulate definite prog- 
ress toward a unity of state work, with Wiscon- 
sin and Northern California moving that way. 
Ohio then outstripped Michigan, to be herself 
outdone by Northern and then by Southern Cali- 
fornia. And now Wisconsin and Michigan are 
showing us all the way unto complete unity of 
state interests under a single administrative head. 
Other states in their annual meetings and by 
committees or groups of individuals are advanc- 
ing in this direction. 

Certain thoughts appear to be brewing in many 
minds, somewhat as follows : — ( i ) It is desir- 
state consciousness able and really obligatory to 
and state Rights mi jf y our Congregational 

forces and forms for superior efficiency. (2) 
A state consciousness has been born, and is 
growing lustily. (3) Within its own borders 
state administration is more effective than na- 
tional. The former has the advantages of in- 
timate knowledge, close range, personal con- 
tact and strong pressure on localities, churches, 
individuals. (4) The right of a state to self- 
[110] 



State Unification 

administration is superior to the right of any 
national body to act within a state's boundaries. 
Mr. John Fiske says again, "Stated broadly, so 
as to acquire somewhat the force of a universal 
proposition, the principle of federalism is just 
this: that the people of a state shall have full 
and entire control of their own domestic affairs, 
which directly concern them only, and which they 
will naturally manage with more intelligence and 
with more zeal than any distant governing body 
could possibly exercise." Thus to efficiency and 
expediency we add state rights. Each fellowship 
body takes precedence of the higher ones. The 
rights of the state conference are prior to those 
of the national bodies. Nothing is left to the 
latter save what the churches see will be most 
effective when handled nationally. Thus our 
Congregational administration is "broad-based 
upon the people's will/- Our national organiza- 
tions have not ahvays acted so; they could not 
until yesterday, but only to-day are they fairly 
beginning the new ways. We are all freshly 
realizing the supremacy of the churches, the rep- 
resentative principle, and the movement from be- 
low upward. There is no danger of stripping 
our national work of its magnificent proportions. 
Duty to our splendid societies must be kept 
aflame. The limits of state administration are 
quickly reached. Just now, in the warmth of state 
reorganization, there is special need of steadiness. 
x American Political Ideas, pp. 133, 134. 

[in] 



Congregational Administration 

and vision. It is easy for mortals, acting in what-~ 
ever capacity, to grow so intent as to lose sight of 
the greater horizons. But wherever the sky-line 
may be, here at hand are the state boundaries, en- 
closing concrete and instant obligations. 

Full details cannot be given of the reorganiza- 
tion which has taken place in the several states 
already mentioned. Reports can be obtained 
from the state registrars. At this time it will be 
more profitable to present some of the major ele- 
ments in the process. 

First, the incorporation of the state confer- 
ence. That it is possible to incorporate a body 
incorporation of of such extended bulk is proved 
state conference by the fact that the General Con- 
ference of Michigan has lived an incorporated 
life since 1886, and others from more recent 
dates. Others still, like Ohio and California, 
have secured incorporation within the last two 
years. State missionary societies have been cor- 
porations for a much longer period. Reasons 
for this step seem cogent. Under such an inter- 
pretation of Congregationalism as we are here 
submitting, no damage to our liberties need be 
feared. The state conference is simply the 
churches themselves, lacking all alien elements. 
Its responsibilities are changing and developing. 
Financial and legal obligations will be heavy in 
thoroughgoing state unification. The confer- 
ence, once incorporated, is quite equal to all re- 
sponsibilities and opportunities. 

[112] 



State Unification 

The state conference being thus prepared for 
whatever may befall, the proposal is no less than 
to unify in its hands and con- state work 
duct under its superintend- Rifled m conference 
ence all the Congregational work in the state. It 
may be well to repeat that the private spheres of 
the separate churches and local associations are 
not to be invaded, that only the common work 
laid out in state proportions is in view, and that 
throughout the new method the force continues 
to be the influence of public opinion and not the 
arm of coercion. Under such safeguards the 
states are proceeding to do the thing which seems 
good theory to us all, to simplify complexity, to 
transform competition into combination, to re- 
duce operating expenses, to direct the whole sys- 
tem from one office. It is easier to state this and 
to cheer for it than to achieve it; but it can 
be achieved everywhere. The conviction is 
already wide-spread that the results will be 
cheaply bought at whatever price of labor and 
patience. 

In some cities the relations between state con- 
ference and state missionary society present dif- 
ficulties. The latter body has ac- conference 
quired a strong and independent 
life. Our action through it has 
grown habitual. In some cases, Connecticut and 
California for example, its relations with the 
conference have been vital. The conference 
elects the directors of the Missionary 

[113] 



versus 
Missionary Society 



Congregational Administration 

Society of Connecticut. The General 
Association of Northern California used to elect 
the members of its home missionary society, 
while at present the twenty-one directors of the 
Northern California Congregational Conference 
are ipso facto the total membership of the home 
missionary society, and elect its directors from 
their own number. Elsewhere the conditions are 
less favorable, the missionary society being quite 
separate from the conference. The question be- 
ing asked in state after state is this, Why should 
not the conference do its state missionary work 
directly? The conference is the churches organ- 
ized, as the Connecticut constitution admirably 
puts it, "for the purpose of fraternal intercourse 
and cooperation and mutual incitement in all the 
evangelizing work of Christian churches." Why 
then must it employ a separate incorporated body 
and turn the churches' contributions into a sepa- 
rate treasury? Moreover, the churches are in- 
terested in developing a state superintendency 
much wider than that hitherto confined mainly 
to home missionary work. Must there be two 
superintendents? There need be but one in case 
the state conference manages directly its home 
missionary interests. 

The issue here is not yet so clear as to induce 
uniform action. The Ohio conference has or- 
various ganized its state work into two bu- 
Methods reaus ; of one of these the home mis- 
sionary society is a main part. In Michigan the 
[H4] C 



State Unification 

general association, the home missionary society, v 
the foreign missionary society, and the central 
advisory board have all been united into one cor- 
poration, the Michigan Congregational Confer- 
ence. For legal reasons the home missionary so- 
ciety retains a nominal existence, but within a 
few years may entirely disappear. In Northern 
California financial obligations compel for the 
present the retention of the home missionary so- 
ciety as a separate corporation. In Southern 
California the early disappearance of that society 
into the state conference has been provided for. 
The Nebraska state body has under consideration 
a plan which merges the home missionary society 
in the conference. Wisconsin has reduced its 
state affairs,- including its home missionary so- 
ciety, to a splendid unity. 

Possible legal and financial complications may 
present in any state grave difficulties. Trusts 
must be faithfully administered. Legal 
Funds must not be lost by unwise complications 
attempts to transfer them. Future gifts and leg- 
acies must not be jeopardized. The strong senti- 
ments of living givers must not be shocked. Such 
considerations urge deliberation until good coun- 
sel settles upon the changes most certain to con- 
serve all interests. But on the other hand the 
financial and legal forms become subject to modi- 
fication in so far as it appears that moral in- 
tegrity inheres in their general management for 
specified ends rather than in details of method. 

[»53 



Congregation al A dminuiratio n 

Administrative form9 are but means of convey- 
ing spiritual power. It is the end that is precious 
to the givers of money. And it may transpire 
in these state negotiations that a minority, 
scarcely numerical at all, but forceful and per- 
sistent, can roll into the path obstacles which 
would not appear at all to a unanimous company. 
Legal difficulties are adjustable to unanimous de- 
sires held faithfully to an unaltered purpose. In 
the tri-church negotiations the committee on 
vested interests affirmed that no insurmountable 
obstacles were presented by property considera- 
tions. The law can bring to pass such changes 
as right-hearted persons have ceased to contend 
against. 

The relations of the state conference with our 
national missionary societies comprise one of the 

Conference and most delicate matters to be ad- 

National societies j uste d. In certain of the reor- 
ganizing states this has proved to be a point of 
some friction. Our national societies have been 
accustomed to solicit funds freely and without 
concert anywhere in the land. They have gone 
in and out among our churches without let or 
hindrance. They have dealt directly and sepa- 
rately with the churches, each society seeking the 
largest possible income without regard to any 
other society. The confusion and discomfort of 
this system, the increasing irritation and inade- 
quacy, the rising demand for cooperation between 
the societies, the need of- orderly and reliable 
["6] 



State Unification 

giving, — these have brought on our present 
trial of proportionate benevolence. This 
advance has been synchronous with the 
growing state consciousness and consolida- 
tion. And now the states are undertaking to ap- 
ply, each in its own territory, the offered plan of 
benevolence, and on the other hand are serving 
friendly notice upon the national societies that 
their solicitations must no longer be independent 
of state advice and joint management. Our 
churches are unwilling to have a scheme, elabo- 
rated however carefully in New York or Boston, 
laid down hard all over the land from the na- 
tional offices. There is something which looks 
like assessing the churches, or at least assessing 
the conferences and associations; and assessment 
is another of those dreadful words which, when 
uttered megaphonically from national headquar- 
ters, make autonomous Congregationalists nerv- 
ous. The state conferences are therefore saying, 
Hand this new scheme to us for inspection and 
application. 

These adjustments between the state and na- 
tional bodies must be made with the utmost pains 
and good-will. It is true, and it For increased 
must be kept clear, that the one de- Efficiency 
sire is for increased efficiency. No detriment to 
the glorious work of our national societies will 
be permitted. No injustice will be done them by 
the state bodies. On the contrary, the confer- 
ences purpose to give the societies a better hear- 

[117] 



Congregation al A dministration 

ing in the churches and to offer themselves as 
new agencies for presenting the national forms of 
work, raising increased funds and training the 
churches to systematic giving. The con- 
ferences should commend all the national 
societies to the churches, inspire and hold 
the churches to their duty, welcome the 
secretaries and agents of the societies, instruct 
and stimulate the churches, operate detailed finan- 
cial plans, thus coworking with the national so- 
cieties. Nothing less is proposed by any state. 
It may indeed seem new and strange to the of- 
ficers of the societies to hear the conferences 
claim to be in charge of their own fields. But 
it is believed that all parties concerned will soon 
discover power and a superior brand of Congre- 
gationalism in the new measures with their sys- 
tem, their multiplied leaders and interests, their 
distributed responsibility. •- 

If it be asked in what actual terms adjustments 
have already been arranged in any states, the re- 
Experiments in ply must be very partial. In some 
several states cases cooperation has been initiated 
at useful points, in the faith that no problems in 
fraternal adjustment will prove baffling. As con- 
crete examples, Wisconsin, Michigan, and North- 
ern California may be cited again. 

In California the state and national adjustment 

is affected by the residence among us of district 

secretaries or agents of the national societies 

whose field is the entire Pacific coast. With 

[118J 



State Unification 

these brethren, as also with state superintendents 
of national forms of work, we have the happiest 
relations. We have entered upon our new ad- 
ministration with the cordial cooperation of these 
men, believing that all adjustments will prove 
manageable as they emerge. Our board of 
twenty-one directors is entrusted with our state- 
wide future, the relations with the national so- 
cieties being one of the main things left confi- 
dently in their charge. In Michigan, while noth- 
ing has been formulated in the constitution or in 
resolution, the state leaders and forces are a unit 
in insisting that all national work in the state 
shall be under state direction, and that there 
shall be in Michigan no officers or agents of the 
national societies wholly directed from without 
the state. 

The most definite statement of relations thus 
far made is by the Wisconsin State ^Association. 
It is as follows: "That the ^Association through 
its board of directors shall control the work now 
done by The Congregational Sunday-School and 
Publishing Society, but the national society shall 
be consulted in the appointment of superintendent 
and missionaries and in the initiation of all im- 
portant measures. All money received for the 
Sunday-school work in our denomination in Wis- 
consin shall pass through the hands of the treas- 
urer of the Association, but the national society 
shall receive from such offerings and bequests 
an amount to be determined from year to year 

C"9l 



Congregational Administration 

by the board of directors. Appeals to the 
churches of Wisconsin in behalf of the national 
society shall be through the office of the State 
Association. The directors shall organize this 
work under a committee of their own appoint- 
ment, of which committee the superintendent of 
Sunday-school work shall be a member ex officio. 
While the work of this committee shall be dis- 
tinct from the work of the home missionary com- 
mittee, it shall be coordinate with home mission- 
ary work, and the Sunday-school and home mis- 
sionary committees shall have a joint conference 
at least once a year. The superintendent and 
Sunday-school committee shall use the office force 
of the Association in their work and shall use the 
association office for their headquarters." 

The points here are state management under a 
superintendent and committee of Sunday-school 
work, consultation with the national society, con- 
tributions to the national treasury, appeals by na- 
tional society agents to be made through the 
state office, the state Sunday-school superintend- 
ent and committee to use the state headquarters 
and to be appointed by, and responsible to the 
state board of directors. The design in both 
Michigan and Wisconsin is to develop similar 
relations of state superintendence and cooperation 
with all the national societies alike, reducing the 
present diversity to order. 

An easier adjustment is that between state 
conference and local associations. What the 
[ 120] 



State Unification 

churches through their representatives plan for 
the whole state can best be put Into execution 

through the local associations. Conferev.ee and 

These are smaller groups of the a**™**™* 
same churches. There should be no friction within 
the state. The Congregational way is to appoint 
an active committee in each local association to 
cooperate with the central committee of the con- 
ference. In Michigan there are such advisory 
committees heading up in the board of trustees 
in the conference. The same is true in Wiscon- 
sin, Ohio and California, Thus the whole state 
shares the responsibilities of administration. The 
two main points are always and everywhere the 
same : — local responsibility all along the work- 
ing line and effective state unity. 

Thus we reach the question of administrative 
headship in a Congregational state. What form 
shall the state executive take? Administrative 
What the states are working at is, Headsh *P 
as we have seen, to unite all activities under a 
single administration. The unifying body must 
be the state conference with a board of directors 
large enough to manage the whole diversified 
work. The board should contain at least one rep- 
resentative from each local association in the 
state. In Michigan the directors number one 
from each local association and four at large; 
in Wisconsin the same plus moderator, registrar, 
and treasurer ; in Southern California and North- 
ern California twenty-one similarlv distributed; 

[121] 



Congregational Administration 

in Ohio, twenty-seven; in South Dakota, fifteen. 
The aim is to make these directors the responsi- 
ble managers, more or less directly, of the total 
state work. They may act through bureaus and 
committees, and even through separate home mis- 
sionary corporations. Wherever the latter can 
legally be dispensed with, the unity of work and 
the immediate management of the directors may 
be complete. In some states, notably Michigan 
and Wisconsin, the directors are already going 
one step further. They are putting the state 
work under a single executive, elected either by 
the directors or the conference, responsible to the 
board and subject to its direction. In these states 
the superintendent is in charge not merely 
of the home missionary work as heretofore, but 
of all forms of work now organized together 
under the directors of the incorporated state con- 
ference. The different departments — home mis- 
sionary, Sunday-school, church building, foreign 
missionary and others — he will conduct through 
heads of departments and committees. The 
whole force is the executive agency of the board 
of directors, which is itself responsible to the con- 
ference. This complete unification of state work 
is rational and practical. It is also proper and 
consistent Congregationalism. 

We come now to superintendence as an ele- 
ment in Congregationalism. Its discussion is 
most pertinent here, because in state work it is 
most in evidence and debate. But it opens out 
[ 122] 



State Unification 

into larger proportions. Let the precise point of 
inquiry be noted. The question is not whether the 
employment of executive agents superintendence 
is germane to the Congrega- a Factor in 

, tvL t_i r <i 1 Congregationalism 

tional polity ; no body of churches 
can grow and serve without such leaders. The 
question is not whether to admit into our system 
an element hitherto rejected; the element is pres- 
ent. The question is, Shall we build it up, and 
how far? We are quite accustomed to the class 
of men called superintendents; shall we enlarge 
their scope and influence? This is one point of 
difference between denominations which are al- 
ready practising federation and even discussing 
union. Along this line of administrative super- 
intendence how far can we safely and wisely go, 
either to promote our own efficiency or to meet 
other bodies inclined to union? 

Let us bear in mind our large use of this form 
of service. We find it in the secretaryships of 

Our national Societies. Enlarged Superintendence 

We have it nearer home Its Dan e ers and usefulness 
in the district secretaries and state superintend- 
ents sustained by these societies. We have super- 
intendents or secretaries of city missions, of 
church extension societies, of Sunday-school 
work, of Christian Endeavor, of the Brother- 
hood, and of other lines of work. Chief of all 
for current developments in our polity are the 
state home missionary superintendents or secre- 
taries. This is the office which the states now 
[ 123] 



Congregational Administration 

reorganizing are enlarging, to bear in some cases 
cited the total administrative headship of the state 
work. The very first step in the enlargement of 
this office is sensitively challenged. The scope of 
the office has been confined to our home mission- 
ary churches. But surely a dividing line solely 
financial between churches, separating the one 
division as independent from the other as de- 
pendent, is far from making a fraternal and gra- 
cious distinction. It is proposed to minimize this 
distinction and make the state superintendent 
the servant of all the churches. This is ques- 
tioned, resented, resisted by some leaders and 
churches, as derogatory to themselves and a men- 
ace to local autonomy. But it is neither, when 
rightly constituted, manned and understood. Cu- 
riously, some persons and churches are sensitive 
to the presence of a Congregational superintend- 
ent suffered to run at large in a state. His mere 
existence irritates. If he venture to ask a church, 
Is there anything you care to have me do for 
you ? the question sounds like a threat against 
liberty; surely it contains the veiled approach of 
authority; the man is a fledgling bishop! It is, 
however, interesting to learn from any home 
missionary superintendent, how few churches 
there are which never call upon him for any sort 
of service. It is safe to say that there is no such 
official in the land whose desk is often free from 
business pertaining to self-sustaining churches. 
It is already happily and fruitfully true that our 
[ 124 ] 



State Unification 

churches and superintendents are ignoring the 
line between missionary and non-missionary 
churches, that the superintendents are regarded as 
servants of all the churches, and that to forbid 
our self-supporting churches to seek further serv- 
ice from the superintendents would embarrass 
our state conditions as few other things could. 
To promote the home missionary superintendent 
to be superintendent of all the churches w r ould 
be scarcely more than formal recognition of ac- 
tual facts. And then to bring together in his 
executive hand all the reins of state activity 
would be simply to consolidate our scattered in- 
terests around the natural and prepared center. 

Such an enlarged superintendency lies wholly 
in the realm of administration, having no -legisla- 
tive or judicial function. It is confined to 
clothed with no irresponsible au- Administration 
thority, possessed of no coercion; nothing is in 
Congregationalism. It is influential leadership; 
influential certainly and strongly, else it need not 
be at all. It is service and sacrifice, not lordship. 
It is the organ of the churches' mutual care. Its 
opportunity is wide and grand, its duties infi- 
nitely exacting, its devotion even unto death. 
Here, as everywhere in Congregationalism and 
democracy, the personal equation bulks large. It 
is nothing to say that the wrong man in this 
office may grow T lordly and tyrannical. In a 
world of freedom all perversions are possible. 
But as no man taketh this power unto himself, 

[125] 



Congregational Administration 

so no man retains it by personal prowess. We, 
the churches, appoint him and supersede him for 
cause. I heard Dr. Gladden ridicule the fear of 
authority, saying that he should like to see a Con- 
gregational officer attempt authority over the 
churches; forthwith we w r ould make him wish 
that he had never been born. We need not deny 
the tendency of official position to entrench itself 
and put forth power. But if any concrete case of 
it proceed far, the fault is the people's, the rem- 
edy being always in their hands. Do not illus- 
trate by the "big stick" in politics or industry. 
In neither industry nor politics are there equal 
incentives to righteousness, service, and sacrifice; 
in neither are evil men so weak in social re- 
sources, so exposed to rebuke and displacement. 
No system of things is so secure from official tyr- 
anny as a body of free churches, whose reliance 
is upon genuine moral character and Christian 
experience, whose instrument is right reason. In 
our Congregational order we may develop the 
executive superintendency without imperiling the 
liberties of our churches. No superintendent can 
obtain his office or hold it save by the concurrent 
action of the churches. No superintendent can 
touch a single church against its will. Be it re- 
peated till "the youngest critic has died," — we 
are a body of free churches; our officers are our 
servants, always subject to our will. On such 
a basis we may organize a unified and effective 
order, and have for our responsible leaderships 

[126] 



State Unification 

Christian men too choice in character, too win- 
some in approach, too wise in counsel, too re- 
sourceful in strategy, too effective in action, too 
unreserved in sacrifice, too divinely attended, to 
be suspected of ambition or begrudged the nth 
power of influential service. Any system of 
elected and removable superintendence is safe in 
Congregationalism. Until we develop it, we are 
behind our duty and beneath our opportunity. 
Dr. Mackennal said again, in his address from 
the chair of the Congregational Union of Eng- 
land and Wales, "If it be recognized that the 
government of each particular church is in its 
membership, we may adopt diocesan and con- 
nexional methods of administration, not only 
without mischief, but even with the best results/' 



[127] 



LECTURE V 
NATIONAL UNITY 



V 
NATIONAL UNITY 

At the point reached by the preceding lecture, 
there were more than twoscore separate state 
conferences, each composed of the The Field 
Congregational churches of a i* the 
single state, and vitally related World 
to the local associations in the same ter- 
ritory. Our construction of an adequate admin- 
istrative system must not, as we have heard from 
Mr. John Fiske, stop short of achieving national 
unity. The field is the country, cut and uncut 
by state boundaries, and the field is the world. 
There are problems and opportunities sectional, 
national, continental and ecumenical, requiring 
larger regimentation and "farflung battle lines/' 
This we discovered a century ago. For a hundred 
years we have lived in these greater visions, and 
have wrought unto the ends of the earth. Ap- 
paratus for each new line of service came at call, 
in the best way, the only way it could come, by 
experiment and invention; it was, in Professor 
Ladd's phrase, "Progress by individual inquiry/ 51 
The Congregational churches knew not how to 
rise up all together, act in full national force 
through accredited representatives, and create a 
system of agencies expansive enough for the 
* Principles of Church Polity, p. 57. 

[131] 



Congregational Administration 

growing day. Such churches as desired to — 
and that was the great majority — accepted and 
employed the societies launched by a few organiz- 
ing individuals. Those unrepresentative, self- 
governing societies were true Congregational 
products of their time, suited to Congregational 
spirit and action. They were supported with 
fervent and generous devotion, and drew our in- 
dependent churches together in common service. 
And when in these last days the spirit of Con- 
gregational unity began to stir within us, behold 
among us several unifying agencies of truly na- 
tional proportions and influence! It was only 
too plain, however, that since each was partial 
and specialized, independent of the others and the 
churches, and was missionary rather than admin- 
istrative, no one of them was capable of organiz- 
ing a truly national unity of the Congregational 
churches. 

Our unifying body is the National Council. It 
came to the kingdom for this hour. Far-sighted 
The National men, they who organized it in 1871, 
council « on t k e grave D f buried prejudices." 

The Congregational churches cf the United 
States, not their associations and conferences, are 
the constituent members, as saith its con- 
stitution. The delegates to the meetings of 
the Council, elected in the local and state bodies, 
are representatives of the churches which directly 
compose those bodies and the Council. Thus our 
highest administrative agency is but one step re- 
[132] 



1 



National Unity 

moved — it were better called a half step — from 
the churches themselves. 

The National Council is a permanent body, 
having perennial life like the conferences, associa- 
tions and the churches themselves, a Permanent 
There are some who speak as if the Body 
Council had no enduring existence, sprang anew 
into being on the stroke of a gavel once in three 
years and dropped dead a few days later 
under the same magic touch. It is the tempo- 
rary session of a permanent body that is opened 
and closed upon a gavel stroke by a few tech- 
nical words. If this was not intended at Oberlin 
in 1 87 1, we have grow r n to the stronger idea. It 
is explicitly stated in the constitution, at any rate, 
and we may hope our fathers knew how well 
they w r ere building that platform. "The Con- 
gregational churches of the United States," they 
said, and "by elders and messengers assembled, 
do now associate themselves in National Coun- 
cil"; "the churches will meet in National Council 
every third year"; "at each triennial session" — 
the phrase is "triennial session" — certain officers 
shall be chosen "to serve from the close of such 
session to the close of the next triennial session." 
It is the constitution of a living organism, never 
disappearing altogether, never unproductive, but 
rising into full view and formal action once in 
three years. 

In the section of the constitution just quoted, 
provision is made for secretary, registrar and 

[ 133] 



Congregational Administration 

treasurer, who shall hold office and continue ac- 
tive during the triennium; also for a provisional 
Moderator of committee to arrange for the next 
National Council re g U i ar session and for any special 
session that may be called. As to the ad interim 
standing of these officers and this committee, there 
can be no> difference of opinion; nor respecting 
any and all standing committees, for these also are 
expressly provided for in the constitution. Over 
the moderatorship there has arisen since the 
meeting of 1901 an earnest disagreement. The 
moderator elected then was the Rev. Amory H. 
Bradford, D.D., of New Jersey, of bluer Con- 
gregational blood than John Wise or Nathaniel 
Emmons, and equally loyal to Congregational 
spirit and principle. Believing himself moder- 
ator until his successor should be elected, and 
desiring to make the office useful between ses- 
sions, he ventured to speak out in the organized 
silence of Congregationalism. It was a mon- 
strous thing to do! Some told him so when they 
had caught their breath. Moderator of what? 
There was nothing to be moderator of between 
October 1901 and October 1904. But he went 
right on serving the churches as moderator of 
the National Council of the Congregational 
Churches of the United States until his successor 
was elected in the triennial session at Des Moines. 
That successor was busier yet in the same 
capacity until the present moderator was elected 
in 1907 at Cleveland. In the current triennium 

[134] 



National Unity 

our leader is rendering much admirable service, 
is generous with time and influence, and is in no 
danger of being declared ad interim incompetent. 
Many of us are sure we have a standing moder- 
ator of the National Council; some refuse to 
acknowledge him. Congregationalists are not 
compelled to take what they do not want. We 
are waiting hopefully for that unanimity of which 
we sing. In 187 1 our fathers had not reached 
this issue of a permanent moderatorship. In 
their constitution they ordered the election of a 
moderator at the beginning of every stated or 
special session "to preside over its deliberations" ; 
in the following sentence, however, they direct 
him as moderator to open with an address the fol- 
lowing meeting of the Council. A pertinent by- 
law has been added since then, w T hich says, "The 
presiding officers shall retain their offices until 
their successors are chosen," etc. At Des Moines 
we were instructed in a sincere and very expert 
speech from the floor that that clause of the by- 
law, when enacted, was not intended to mean 
what it says. At the present time we desire to 
have it mean what it says. It would seem wise, 
however, to take such action as may set the whole 
matter at rest. 

In Congregationalism some one does a thing, 
and presently the rest of us exclaim, Why, that's 
right ! So now we have a stand- The First 
ing moderator, and not merely a congregationaust 
sessional presiding officer. We could not longer 
[ x 35 1 



Congregational Administration 

do without him. The national organization of 
six thousand Christian churches is an important 
factor in the social order. Its moderatorship is 
an eminent post of honor and service, — not a 
prize of ambitious politics, but a stewardship en- 
trusted to capacity and consecration. Its oc- 
cupant should be a man of national proportions, 
administrative ability, and spiritual power. He 
is for the time the first man in the Congregational 
land. We have not yet reached, we may never 
reach, the point of expecting our moderator to 
devote his whole time to this office. We could 
not call a pastor away from his church or a lay- 
man out of his business without at least fair 
promise of a service longer than three years. Nor 
is this so needful while the secretaryship con- 
tinues powerful and productive. 

The secretaryship of the National Council, as 
things now stand, should be the most conspicuous 
secretary of position in the leadership of our 

National Council churches. There is, of course, 
large room for divergent conceptions of it. To 
me it seems mainly an outdoor office. There 
is much indoor woric to be done, of which the 
Year Book is the most palpable product. The 
churches should enable the secretary to conduct 
this indoor work through assistants and em- 
ployees. He himself, being a man of national 
size, and persona grata everywhere, should be out 
among the churches. All the state conferences 
and many of the local associations should know 

[136] 



National Unity 

his voice and feel his heart. He would carry 
everywhere the great issues of our organized 
churches. In his person would be greeted Con- 
gregationalism incarnate, and men would know it 
as a living thing. In many parts of the land his 
appearance would do more than anything else to 
give Congregationalism a local habitation and a 
name. Through him churches and pastors would 
learn, for example, that the two-cent annual 
assessment is a real and reasonable thing, and 
that honor is involved in its prompt payment. A 
secretary of the Council might, from his office 
desk, desire just such far-stretching ministry, 
and might wonder at not being invited in all 
directions. It would certainly be well for the 
churches in their organized bodies to request his 
service, and I can think of but one good reason 
why they might hesitate to do so. But when a 
man becomes a secretary he does not forfeit his 
native right of initiative and administration. Let 
him invite himself out and range freely among 
us. This office is a post of eminence and leader- 
ship. We elect its incumbent for his capacity as 
leader. Let us then expect him to lead, giving 
him support, attention, cooperation. His salary 
should be adequate to first-class constructive 
ability. And ample funds should be furnished 
for extensive service afield. It would be interest- 
ing, perhaps painful, to learn how generally our 
churches and ministers still conceive of the Na- 
tional Council secretary as an office employee 

[ 137 ] 



Congregational Administration 

rather than as an organizer of national forces for 
world-wide enterprise. 

National Council finances cannot be passed 
over in silence. We have reached a pass wherein 
Finances of we must presently, perhaps at the 

National Council next mee ting of the Council, 

choose between two alternatives: either to 
increase considerably the Council's income for 
operating expenses or to decline our en- 
larging service to the Kingdom of God. 
For some years the annual income of the 
Council stood at one and one-half cents per Con- 
gregational church-member. At that rate seven 
hundred thousand members would give $10,500 
a year. Since the last meeting of the Council 
two cents per member have been called for, 
amounting to $14,000, from seven hundred thou- 
sand members. The state conferences are the 
bodies to collect this money and pay it into the 
national treasury. It is surprising and humiliat- 
ing to learn that there is always a number of states 
delinquent in payment, some of them two or even 
three years in arrears, and that these national 
moneys are never paid in full. Ultimate respon- 
sibility rests upon the churches. There are 
pastors and church officers who flatly refuse or 
silently repudiate their part of this common ob- 
ligation. For such men or groups of men cur- 
rent life has the sharp term "grafters"; they 
gather in as gratuity the standing benefits of 
membership in national Congregationalism. Such 

[138] 



National Unity 

conduct is indefensible; it does not fall under 
casuistry; it is simply wrong. Finance is never 
unmoral, but often immoral The guilty men 
and churches cannot be imprisoned for debt; 
they may yield to Congregational sentiment as 
that grows vigorous and searching. 

But what do we want of funds, and in- 
creased funds in our national administration? 
The salary and expenses of the increased 
national secretary have been men- income 
tioned. The Year-Book, indispensable to our 
denominational life, is an expensive kind of book. 
The salary and office expenses of the treasurer 
are not large, but real. Beyond these there 
spreads out an enlarging scope of official 
and committee work, for which at present we 
have almost no provision. We appoint standing 
committees to transact important business be- 
tween sessions; these committees cannot count 
on having their bare traveling expenses paid for 
a single meeting in the three years. There 
are lines of new work which require increasing 
expenditure, such as the Brotherhood movement, 
interdenominational comity, evangelism, social 
reform. The National Council has initiated 
work on all these lines, appointed committees, 
even approved the employment of special agents 
or secretaries, without offering the least financial 
provision for the work. This state of affairs can- 
not, it would seem, be continued. Our six thou- 
sand churches must not be limited to the service 

[ 139] 



Congregation al A d ministration 

of men who can afford and are interested to 
pay their own expenses or are able and willing to 
solicit contributions for their special tasks. Con- 
gregational work is already too multiform and 
expensive for these devoted and generous men. 
Must we imprison ourselves within the little forms 
of work which can be carried on in the good old 
way? The alternatives are endowment funds 
for administration, or increased per capita dues, 
punctually and regularly paid, from all our mem- 
bers in the land. I believe the Council must 
seriously undertake this vital matter. In the 
present triennium some of our indispensable 
pastors and laymen have declined committee serv- 
ice, because of their quickening conviction on 
this financial problem. 

Nor have we yet the whole financial predica- 
ment before us. There is another factor in it 
Expenses of which bears more sharply than many 
Delegates WO uld have it upon the proper con- 
stitution and efficiency of the National Council. I 
refer to the expenses of delegates to the meetings 
of the Council. Our national meetings never can 
be completely representative so long as attend- 
ance is left to 1 the convenience and financial re- 
sources of individuals. At every meeting there 
are large gaps in our ranks, mainly according to 
distance save for special modifying circum- 
stances. And the actual attendants are in very 
many cases not those we should choose to send, 
but those who can and will go. It is not that any 
[ 140] 



National Unity 

pastor or layman is unworthy to go; we are dem- 
ocrats. On the contrary, just because all are 
worthy, we desire to distribute the high privilege 
of service and culture. We desire to be repre- 
sented by the men of our choice, and at special 
junctures by those best fitted for the issues to be 
wrought out. Large numbers of us have already 
fallen out of sympathy with those pastors and 
laymen, attendant on the Council again and 
again, who resist the change which would alter 
considerably the personnel of the meetings. We 
ought to be entirely free to send what delegates 
we would. The matter cannot be left to state 
and local bodies. These have always been at 
liberty to pay their own delegates' expenses, but 
they neither do it nor can do it. In so broad a 
land the burden remains too unequal. 

The only solution of the problem, the only way 
to assemble whomsoever we would, the only way 
to enlist, gradually, our total force, No other 
the only way to make our national ad- Solutlon 
ministration a real and vital thing to our ministers 
and churches everywhere, is to provide amply 
and administer equitably a certain fund for dele- 
gates' expenses. True enough, we have sorrow- 
ful object-lessons on either side of us, awakening 
dread of the difficulties and dangers of such a 
fund. But nothing great was ever done in 
dread of difficulty and danger. The Congrega- 
tional churches of the United States in National 
Council assembled are six thousand strong, doing 

[mi] 



Congregational Administration 

enormous business for the Kingdom of God. As 
at present managed, the frequent remark is far 
from groundless, though severe and unjust, that 
the Council appears to be composed not of six 
thousand churches, but of certain numbers of in- 
terested individuals able to attend. The critic 
should discover the motives of genuine consecra- 
tion underlying personal interest in the men 
whose costly and faithful service sustains the 
national administration which alone gives co- 
herence and scope to our sectional and local life. 
But the criticism should be silenced by altering 
the general conditions. 

The change now transpiring in the character 
of the Council's meetings is viewed with some 
Meetings of concern. It is a matter which calls 

National council f or ^ef^ attention and provi- 
sion. Time was when the meetings were largely 
of inspiration and communion. Noble addresses 
were heard with leisurely attention and discussed 
with sustained interest. At present the Provi- 
sional Committee is hesitating to invite speakers 
and assure them the time assigned them. At the 
Cleveland meeting the encroachments of business 
repeatedly threatened an impasse in the program. 
The difficulty will increase if Congregationalists 
continue to enjoy doing business in open session. 

We must give business the right of way. With 
our glorious themes and speakers we have other 
occasions to commune. But this is our one op- 
portunity in three years to shape our national 

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National Unity 

unity, to initiate and advance measures, and to 
authorize and direct our ad interim administra- 
tion. The Council meeting is Business Sessions 

therefore a business session. The Mainl y 
program should be conformed to that idea. The 
pressure grows heavier. No wonder the question 
is up, How long will triennial sessions suffice for 
the business of so large a bod}' of churches? 
No man could wish to multiply meetings. Pos- 
sibly we might appoint an executive or business 
committee charged with more general functions 
between sessions. 

Among considerations of national unity, main 
interest is directed just now to the relations be- 
tween our missionary societies National Council 
and the Council. Preceded by no and 
small amount of discussion, the National Societies 
matter was taken up at Cleveland, and the follow- 
ing recommendation passed by the Council : 
"That the administration of the benevolent inter- 
ests of our churches be directed by the represent- 
atives of the churches in national organization, 
and that this Council appoint a commission of 
fifteen, including a representative from each of 
our benevolent societies, who shall report at its 
next regular meeting such an adjustment of these 
societies to the body of the churches represented 
in this Council as shall secure such direction, care 
being taken to safeguard existing constitutional 
provisions of these societies and the present mem- 
bership of their boards of control, but also to 

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Congregational A dministration 

lodge hereafter the creation and continuance of 
these administrative boards in the suffrage of the 
representatives of the churches. ,, 

This recommendation states clearly the desires 
of those who favor including the missionary so- 
Nationai Unity cieties in the achievement of na- 

M *st tional unity. They believe it 

Include Societies . « . ,, • r 

wise to bring these main lines 
of our service into such representative rela- 
tion to the churches supporting them as can be 
secured only through the Council. Past and pres- 
ent relations are generally understood. The 
unrepresentative status of each society was per- 
sisted in long enough to set up chronic irritation. 
Improved relations are still only partially repre- 
sentative, not yet gearing and belting the socie- 
ties into the Congregational system. The 
societies have approached the churches each in its 
own separate way, negotiating with associations 
or conferences or state missionary societies. 
Though they are national societies, they have not 
formed alliance with the national organization of 
our churches. Only one of them, Ministerial 
Relief, is an agency of the National Council. The 
rest remain independent, self-governing bodies. 
They have barely begun to labor together as 
members one of another and their several affairs 
parts of a single enterprise. Statements here 
must be general, with no time for detailed excep- 
tions. Substantial and hopeful advances in the 
relations of the societies to one another, to the 
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National Unity 

churches and to organized Congregationalism 
are observed with satisfaction. The ordinary 
mortal hailed the Joint Missionary Campaign as 
opening a new era of cooperation. 

The recommendation of the National Council 
quoted above shows what more is asked. The 
Committee on Polity introduced under Direction 
their recommendations with of Council 
these sentences : "With this view of the Congre- 
gational order as representative, and not purely 
independent, your committee unite in the judg- 
ment that local, state and national associations 
afford ample organization for the direction of all 
of our denominational activities, and that the 
function of these organizations may be inclusive 
of all such interests, not imperiling, but directly 
safeguarding the autonomy and liberty of the 
local church. Believing, therefore, that in the 
interest of simplicity, unity and efficiency our or- 
ganism should be representative, we urge the 
elimination of all such organizations as are not 
under the direction of our representative bodies." 
The action thus recommended by the National 
Council would result at least in the coordination 
of our national societies under the direction of 
the Council. Just how, will have to be worked 
out. The Council appointed the commission of 
fifteen to report the wisest procedure. The Con- 
gregational Board of Ministerial Relief illus- 
trates what might be done with all the societies. 

Our Baptist brethren, more independent hither- 
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Congregational Administration 

to than we, have passed us, and are showing us 
the way and the spirit of the way. At their 
Baptist General Convention in 1908 they 

Reorganization $%[£ . "The general activities of the 
denomination are now carried on by eight incor- 
porated societies. These are entirely independ- 
ent one of another, and while deriving their sup- 
port from the denomination at large, are legally 
independent of the denomination as a whole. This 
form of organization, dating as far back as 181 2, 
was a natural outgrowth of circumstances — in- 
deed there seemed to be no other way at the time 
to attain the ends in view. ... In these days, 
however, the old methods are out of date. The 
general work of the denomination, it is believed, 
will be more economically and more effectively 
rendered under a suitable plan of definite coor- 
dination. Such a plan is in accordance with the 
practise of large business interests to-day and 
would command the confidence of laymen whose 
support is essential to the prosperity of the 
work. 

"Be it resolved by the Northern Baptist Con- 
vention : That at the earliest practicable date there 
should be an organic union between the various 
general denominational societies and the North- 
ern Baptist Convention, to the end that the de- 
nomination through its convention may be able 
to determine a suitable related policy for all its 
general activities," etc. 

This action was unanimous. And best of all, 

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National Unity 

the societies readily promised to begin working 
the new plan without waiting for the legal steps 
to be taken. Have our Congregational societies 
been heard offering as much? We hope, how- 
ever, to pursue organic union in the same unan- 
imous way. 

A further reorganization of our missionary 
agencies seems wise to many, and has not escaped 
the attention of the Commission of Fifteen. To 
say that the sevenfold character of our Congrega- 
tional work is confusing to our churches is to put 
it mildly. It is doubtful if a majority of our 
church-members could give all the names of our 
seven societies. Only a minority of our churches 
have been carrying the full number of our socie- 
ties upon their benevolence lists, many churches 
contributing to but two or three. Doubtless the 
plan of proportionate benevolence will gradually 
improve this situation. Nothing, how r ever, 
would relieve it so thoroughly as to reduce the 
number of societies. Such reduction would also 
tend, as constantly appears in the business world, 
to simplify administration, diminish operating 
expenses and multiply efficiency. 

It has been suggested, as one of several pos- 
sible readjustments, that our seven societies 
might be compacted into three: 

i. A foreign missionary society — the Ameri- 
can Board. 

2. A home missionary society, the resultant of 
the Congregational Home Missionary Societv, 

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Congregational Administration 

the Congregational Church Building Society, 
and the Board of Ministerial Relief. 

3. A home-land religious educational society, 
a union of the American Missionary Association, 
the Sunday-School Society, and the Congrega- 
tional Education Society. 

Such a readjustment would leave the publica- 
tion work standing by itself as a business agency, 
serving the whole denomination, capable of large 
expansion and efficiency. 

These are natural and effective departments of 
benevolence, as is seen in other branches of the 
Church. Were we now projecting our work on 
a clear field, we should probably lay it out in pre- 
cisely these three departments. A popular vote 
throughout our churches would, with little doubt, 
declare for these. To remodel the sevenfold 
structure of a century may be more difficult than 
to build threefold from the foundation; yet the 
designs in this case do not differ radically, and 
the alterations would be almost confined to inter- 
nal partitions and rearrangement of space and 
sentiment. Some such consolidation of our work, 
under the direction of the National Council, 
would answer admirably the crescendo call for 
thorough systematization of our Congregational 
fellowship. The purpose extends to the achieve- 
ment of national unity, and is as urgent there as 
at nearer points. The demand is not merely to 
approve individually and locally, but also to con- 
trol in our representative organizations the 



National Unity 

agencies which we entrust with our funds and 
business. This demand may be mistaken. The 
desired unification may prove unmanageable. 
But if it should appear to be the mature 
judgment of the churches, we should not shrink 
from the application of our principle of evolution 
and progress. The chief desideratum is a thor- 
ough study of the situation in the best of spirit. 
It is time, of course, to repeat the ancient and 
honorable reminder that such a national body as 
is now being described, set at the Liberty Not 
head of the Congregational repre- Tlireaten « d 
sentative system, does not threaten the lib- 
erties of the churches. It declines legislative 
and judicial functions. It has no authority to 
intrude into the private affairs of a single church. 
It offers no coercive interference to confer- 
ences and associations in their respective fields. 
As we have seen, the churches organize 
the Council, and the movement is from be- 
low upward. The Council has nothing but 
w r hat is left over from the lower bodies — left 
over because too great for even state manage- 
ment. The Council is a national union for na- 
tional purposes. On these wide issues it formu- 
lates the thought and will of the churches. It 
spreads these formulations before all the churches 
at once. It organizes action in which the whole 
denomination can cooperate. It has apparatus for 
executing the ascertained will of the denomina- 
tion. Thus it is the servant of the whole body, 
[ 149] 



Congregational Administration 

the agency through which six thousand churches 
may act as one on lines of universal Congrega- 
tional duty. 

Let me quote Dr. Mackennal again at this 
highest of constructive points. He says, "I am 
heartily at one with those who believe that 
national religious needs demand a National 
Council with power to administer its own resolu- 
tions; and I think it would be quite within our 
wisdom to devise a scheme, which, while rigidly 
safeguarding the autonomy of the churches in all 
which concerns their congregational life, should 
also make the Union (the National Council) 
autonomous in all the larger matters committed 
to its charge." There is food for further 
thought here. It must be frankly acknowledged 
— boasted, if you will — that we have not 
that corporate autonomy of which he spoke. 
We do not give our organized bodies power to 
administer their own resolutions; we give them 
corporate permission to persuade us to admin- 
Autonomy j ster their resolutions. We are so 
wrapped up in the autonomy of the Christian man 
and the single church, that we never have tried to 
devise a scheme to make our organized bodies 
autonomous in their respective spheres. We 
autonomous men and churches surrender auton- 
omy when, without any extraneous elements 
whatever, we unite in associations, conferences 
and National Council. Suppose the Council 
'■Evolution of Congregationalism, p. 2ii A 

[150] 



National Unity 

should say to a state conference, "Brethren, we 
have all covenanted together in a union which in- 
volves the common pledge of two cents a member 
annually; pay your share of it." The chances 
are, because the facts have been, that from 
various sections of that state would rise autono- 
mous growls, which being interpreted would 
mean, "I never pledged two cents a member, and 
you can't make me pay it. I'll pay it when I get 
ready — if I want to." The Council's officers 
know better than to exercise corporate autonomy 
towards anybody. We all know how their calls 
to service read: "Dear Brethren, the National 
Council, lamenting its inability to consult every 
church-member beforehand on each separate 
question, but trusting in the good-will of the 
churches — which in your persons has never yet 
failed us — would respectfully inform you, etc., 
etc. . . . and would count it a great favor if you 
would kindly consider whether, at no very dis- 
tant day, you will bear your share in these im- 
portant proceedings to which your National 
Council is in honor bound, but on which it is most 
regrettable that several of our leading members 
were unable to be present to vote." While we 
appreciate such deferential approach to our per- 
sonal and local throne, we are well aware how 
little of the world's earnest business could be con- 
ducted in that fashion. What we still have too 
much of is not personal and local autonomy in 
personal and local affairs ; it is personal and local 

1 151 ] 



Congregational Administration 

autonomy in corporate affairs, independent deci- 
sion how far we will act, or whether we will act 
at all, in affairs for which we have become jointly 
responsible as members of these several denomi- 
national bodies. At this point, as suggested in a 
preceding lecture, correction of our Congrega- 
tional system is indicated. Some of us surely 
agree with Dr. Mackennal that Congregational- 
ists have wisdom enough "to devise a scheme, 
which, while rigidly safeguarding the autonomy 
of the churches in all which concerns their con- 
gregational life, should also make our unifying 
bodies (the Union) autonomous in all the larger 
matters committed to their (its) charge." 
Therein would be truly achieved "national unity 
without weakening the sense of personal and 
local independence." 

We have been moving hitherto, as we proposed 
in setting out, from below upward, from local 
Toward National church to National Council, from 
Unity local autonomy to national unity. 

For three hundred years our churches have been 
advancing in this direction. The other polities 
have had authority above the churches, and have 
been conceding more and more local independ- 
ence. We have overdone the latter, and are now 
constructing real unity; a unity, however, which 
shall not be at any point or in any degree apart 
from the churches, but everywhere and totally of 
the churches, by the churches and for the 
churches. We will not even segregate our min- 

[152] 



National Unity 

istry in orders of clergy, presbyteries, or minis- 
terial associations. We will not even put our 
parish business out of our hand for a twelve- 
month by means of an authoritative session. The 
affairs within our reach we will handle by direct 
democracy, the greater affairs by representative 
democracy. Our pow r er shall continue to be in- 
telligence and right reason shaped into public 
opinion. Yet will we draw together into firm 
and enduring array, into fellowship as wide as 
the country and real everywhere, into unified 
Christian service. We will live at liberty in the 
private parish ways where souls are born from 
above and learn their Master's sacrifice. We will 
organize mighty and dependable union for the 
great affairs of the Kingdom, wherein petty in- 
dependence is impotent. 

It is not too much to say that in working out 
such an adequate administrative system we 
should be giving the world a new New Achievement 
achievement. There is nothing * n Ecclesiastical 

. ri .. AT , -i ,i Administration 

quite like it. JNever yet has the 
ecclesiastical world secured genuine and unham- 
pered democracy, with everything — even the 
official ministry — standing within the scope of 
the local church, and then proceeded out of such 
entirely voluntary materials to build up effective 
and enduring national unity. There are many to 
say that it cannot even now be done, that either 
the democracy will be damaged or the unity will 
not be reached. That it has not been done is 

[ 153 1 



Congregational Administration 

true. That it will one day be achieved must also 
be true, as God and brotherhood are real. Some- 
time there will be seven hundred thousand Chris- 
tian men, each one free to follow what the Spirit 
saith to him, living happily together in churches 
as truly self-conducting as their members — seven 
hundred thousand Christian souls, or a million, 
glad and faithful to hold unbound their places in 
orderly array up to national unity, eager in such 
union to multiply for the love they bear Him. the 
power He gives. It may be that that time is 
drawing near. It may be that we are just now 
those Christians. At any rate, the vision is 
superb; not they who do not reach it, but they 
who do not follow, fail. 



1*541 



LECTURE VI 

CONGREGATIONALISM AND 

CHURCH UNION 



VI 

CONGREGATIONALISM AND 

CHURCH UNION 

Christian unity is one thing, the union of 
churches another. Either may exist without the 
other. Conceivably there might be a single ad- 
ministrative body of churches on earth, inclusive 
of all church-members, in which and among 
whom there would be little Christian unity. Such 
external union would be difficult and not endur- 
ing, as church history shows. On the other hand, 
Christian unity in beauty and power, universal 
and abiding, is not dependent upon the absence of 
diversity and .formal division. It may be 
said that the grand objective is essential unity 
and universal fellowship, with divisions solely 
for practical efficiency. What we have to-day is 
divisions unable to unite, aware of spiritual unity, 
with enough fellowship to flavor worship, to dis- 
turb complacency, to mitigate competition, to con- 
fuse conscience, and to lure us onward. We need 
not forget that it was Christian unity, not church 
union, for which Jesus prayed "that they may 
be one, even as we are," and of which he said, 
"By this shall all men know that ye are my dis- 
ciples, if ye have love one to another." Yet he 
must be a Christian without conscience who takes 

[157] 



Congregational A dministration 

from those divine words no rebuke against the 
disruptions of Christendom. For the age-long 
discussion has not only revealed an anemic spirit 
of unity, but has kept that spirit anemic. There 
are many who decry the cause of church union 
with cheers for unity and communion. Chris- 
tians are one, they insist — are one so deeply 
that we need not labor for formal union. And 
you cannot get their minds upon the cruel wrongs 
still perpetrated in the name of Christ. The 
spirit is finally judged by its fruits. And down 
to this very day, even in this best land, many 
fruits of the spirit which actuates the Christian 
bodies are no less than frightful. The shameful 
facts are found in hundreds of overchurched 
communities with their wastes and strifes, while 
in administrative offices we may still hear — al- 
beit less often — insolent refusals to correct the 
wrongs. 

Dr. H. K. Carroll's racy description of eccle- 
siastical variety in our country is too true 
infinite Variety to be merely amusing. "The 
of Religions g rs |- impression one gets," he says, 
"in studying the results of the census is that 
there is an infinite variety of religions in the 
United States. . . . Our native genius for 
invention has exerted itself in this direc- 
tion also, and worked out some curious 
results. The American patent covers no less 
than two original Bibles — the Mormon and 
Qahspe — and more brands of religion, so to 

[158] 



Congregationalism and Church Union 

speak, than are to be found, I believe, in any 
other country. . . . We scarcely appreciate our 
advantages. . . . One may be a pagan, a Jew, 
or a Christian, or each in turn. If he is a pagan, 
he may worship in one of the numerous temples 
devoted to Buddha; if a Jew, he may be of the 
Orthodox or Reformed variety; if a Christian, he 
may select any one of one hundred and twenty- 
five or one hundred and thirty different kinds, or 
join every one of them in turn. He may be six 
kinds of an Adventist, seven kinds of a Catholic, 
twelve kinds of a Mennonite or Presbyterian, 
thirteen kinds of a Baptist, sixteen kinds of a 
Lutheran, or seventeen kinds of a Methodist. He 
may be a member of any one of one hundred and 
forty-three denominations, or of all in succession. 
If none of these suit him, he still has a choice 
among one hundred and fifty separate and in- 
dependent congregations, which have no denomi- 
national name, creed or connection. . . . Accord- 
ing to the scientists no atom is so small that it 
may not be conceived of as consisting of halves. 
No denomination has thus far proved too small 
for division. Denominations appear in the list 
given in this volume with as few as twenty-five 
members. I was reluctantly compelled to ex- 
clude from the census one with twenty-ono mem- 
bers. The reason was, that while they insisted 
that they were a separate body and did not wor- 
ship with other churches, they had no organized 
church of their own. Twelve of them were in 

[159] 



Congregational Administration 

Pennsylvania, divided between Philadelphia and 
Pittsburg, six in Illinois and three in Missouri. 
They were so widely scattered they could not 
maintain public worship/' 1 

Such words ought to be caricature or criminal 
libel, not a sober statement of facts. 

We may hail an awakening conscience respect- 
ing this horror. Think how wide-spread the in- 
terest and effort toward union are. 

Current . 

Movements Outside our own land the move- 

Teward union ment appears in Canada, England, 

Scotland, Wales, Australia, and New Zealand, and 
in all Protestant mission fields in the world, with 
advanced phases in India, China, and Japan. 
Many branches of the Church are engaged in it. 
In our own land the Federal Council is formed of 
thirty-three denominations holding nearly twenty 
millions of members. In England the Free 
Churches are federated in a national council. In 
Canada Presbyterians, Methodists and Congre- 
gationalists are working toward organic union. 
In Australia the present movement includes even 
the Church of England. In South India 
all the Protestant missions have united in 
a Missionary Conference, while Presby- 
terians, Reformed and Congregationalists have 
been fused into one body called the South India 
United Church. In China all the Protestant mis- 
sions are federated and acting together through a 
series of councils. In Japan since 1900 nearly 
1 Religious Forces of the United States, pp. 14, 15, 18. 

[ 160'] 



Congregationalism and Church Union 

all Protestant missions have wrought through a 
"Standing Committee of Cooperating Christian 
Missions/' while at the present time practically 
all Japanese Christians are consummating a na- 
tional federation of churches. Thus the missions 
have taken the lead toward union. With them 
close communion has been, as a missionary said 
years ago, the communion that shuts in, not out. 
They have done much to rouse and shame the 
home-land churches out of their lethargy, till 
now the whole English-speaking world at least 
has been "stabbed broad awake." 

The agitations of this subject show, too, that 
multitudes of Christians, whole denominations, 
are discovering the difference be- Essentials and 
tween essentials and non-essentials, tfon-essentiais 
in doctrine, conduct and administration. This is 
a great discovery for any one. The Protestant 
world is attaining new perspective and propor- 
tion. The result is to clear the road of petty 
obstacles to union. 

The next discovery is breaking here and there, 
like the new T dawn, the discovery that in essen- 
tials of doctrine multitudes of Christians and 
whole bodies of churches agree. If only the es- 
sentials be formulated in spiritual and fraternal 
terms, we make our confession of faith in a 
unison of wonder and joy, as appeared so beauti- 
fully in the Tri-church Council at Dayton in 1904. 
Therewith has come the surprise that thus the 
heaviest obstacle to union is being rolled away. 

[161] 



Congregational Administration 

Nothing has been so pitilessly divisive as doc- 
trinal contention. It thus appears that in some 
cases the problem of union reduces to one of 
polity, adjustments in organization and property 
interests. 

Nothing is plainer, however, than that the 
cause of church union must proceed in great 
Progress by variety. Few generalizations of 
Experiment duty can be made f he enterprise 

is experimental everywhere. We are not far be- 
yond the beginning, and there is no end. Beyond 
the heights we see must lie other ranges of form 
and good. Some organic unions are being 
completed before our eyes, of which there is no 
better instance than that of the South India 
United Church. Other bodies are still too far 
apart to treat definitely with one another. Evan- 
gelicals and Unitarians cannot yet meet in doc- 
trine. Episcopalians and free churches are still 
in sturdy disagreement upon historic ordination. 
Such bodies may cooperate in some forms of 
moral and religious work, may even federate as 
do Episcopalians with others in the Federal 
Council and the New York City Federation. But 
before negotiating union, they must spend much 
time in mutual approaches. 

How, then, stands our Congregational duty 
in this imperial enterprise of the reunion 
of Christendom? In the first place, all 
Congregationalists should face toward union. 
This may seem to some too much to ask. 

[ 162 ] 



Congregationalism and Church Union 

Can we expect seven hundred thousand per- 
sons to be unanimous on a matter so deeply 
affecting personal duty, preference Facing 
and convenience ? Not, to be Toward Union 
sure, on all details; not, perhaps, on every 
concrete case which might arise. But on 
the general theme that church union must be 
furthered, that the wounds of Christendom 
must be healed, that denominations must ac- 
tually unite, and that our power must serve this 
cause, — so far we ought to be awake and unani- 
mous. It is quite evident that we are far from 
unanimity. Some of us object to negotiations 
for union with any other branch of the Church. 
While tri-church union with United Brethren 
and Methodist Protestants was in hand, there 
were many who lay heavily in indifference and 
opposition. They did not judge that case on its 
merits ; they did not prepare their own minds for 
unprejudiced consideration of it. Not all were 
of this sort who opposed that union; some did 
think it through and turn it down on large 
reasoning. But not a few allowed local and 
personal considerations to entrench them against 
so great a procedure in the Kingdom of God, 
while others failed to discern any significance in 
an attempt to heal the breaches in the walls of 
Zion. And so from several directions came the 
time-worn protest that Congregationalists might 
better let well enough alone. 

Be it urged, then, that church union is a 

[ 163 ] 



Congregation al Administration 

matter too momentous for indifference, thought- 
lessness, ignorance or opposition; that it is now 
Why not thrust forward by the cry of human- 
unite? i ty anc j t h e Spirit of God in front 
of most other issues in religious progress; 
that it is the true Christian part to be seeking 
ways and means to promote it; that every con- 
crete instance should find all minds antecedently 
hospitable and all feet ready to run ; that in every 
case the burden of proof lies on those who de- 
cline ; that the proper question is not, Why should 
we unite? but, Why should we not unite? 
not, How can we evade this predicament? 
but, How can we assure this advance? 
When two or more branches of the Church ap- 
proach each other with mutual desire, their nego- 
tiations will resemble those of the Tri-church 
Council at Dayton, not those of the same body 
later at Chicago, not those of our own National 
Council on the same issue at Cleveland. At 
Chicago and Cleveland we lacked much of a 
unanimous purpose to find a way of union. 

More than most Christians, ought Congrega- 
tionalists to take this hospitable and ready pos- 
Duty of ture - Sectarianism has been at a 
conzresa- low power in us. Even loyalty to 
our own has been weak. We have 
been widely sympathetic, and have lived no strait- 
ened life. We have lavishly contributed members 
and money beyond our own boundaries. If we 
cannot now as a denomination act the larger parts 

1 164 1 



Congregationalism and Church Union 

in the world drama, the greater shame is ours. 
We ought to welcome sincere approaches from 
any church bodies at any time. In negotiations 
we ought to stand, whether in doctrine or polity, 
for essentials only. With us difficulties of union 
would in most instances be found in administra- 
tion. We understand essentials and non-essen- 
tials of doctrine; and on essentials we are in 
agreement with large sections of the Church. 
Differences of polity remain; and polity is a 
minor thing. 

It is also worth while to remember that nego- 
tiations which fail may yet advance church union. 
The participants will have learned of one another, 
will have greeted wider horizons, will have 
grown in stature. Congregationalists have 
gained much from intercourse with United 
Brethren and Methodist Protestants. Abiding 
effects will be found operative if that negotiation 
breaks out again, or if some other body solicits 
us. 

The working principle in practical church 
union is opportunism. Who knows what can be 
done? Every inch must be taken Opportuniam the 
and held. Every fraternal glance working 
must be answered in kind. Every Pnnci £ le 
extended hand must be clasped. Nay more, our 
own eyes and hands and hearts must be reaching 
out every way to touch and draw our brethren. 

In the second place, we must, in the interest of 
church union, develop effective unitv and lovaltv 
r r6 5 ] 



Congregational Administration 

of our own. It is not strictly true that the lion 
and lamb unite, certainly not on even terms, to 
congregational P r °duce a third creature better 
unity for Union than the two originals. The result 

with Others ig a jj Hon To the lamb are ]eft n(>t 

even memories of former days that were better 
than these. Recall the characterization of historic 
Congregationalism as a river rising in New Eng- 
land and emptying south and west into Presby- 
terianism. Sometimes we think that outpour 
was checked in 1852 by the Albany Convention, 
when the disastrous Plan of Union, which cost us 
several thousand churches in the middle west, 
was abrogated. It was in good measure checked ; 
but since then almost every ecclesiastical 
family has been tapping our waterways. Our 
power pours at last, we trust, into the kingdom 
of heaven; but too much of it goes thither by 
trickling off in driblets to tumble over firmer 
banks into more acquisitive streams. Most 
easily of all are Congregationalists lured into 
other folds. It is to our credit that we are 
broad-minded and hold no petty shibboleth to be 
the only open sesame to heaven; but we ought 
to stop dissipating our energies. It is time to 
believe hard in ourselves, in the Congregational 
Church, in Congregational methods and spirit. 
We need strength for treating as a church body 
with other bodies. Firm organization will ren- 
der us more fit, not less, for union. When 
strong forces unite, then there is gain. The 

[ 166 ] 



m Congregationalism and Church Union 

Kingdom comes as distinct factors coalesce in a 
richer and higher unity. 

In the tri-church discussions the question kept 
recurring whether Congregationalists had co- 
herence, whether we really consti- Movement by 
tuted an organism, whether, in Enlightened 

. . , ,, ^ Conviction 

case union were voted by the three 
national bodies, our Congregational churches 
could be led into it. The question was pertinent. 
Certain it is that we cannot carry all our churches 
and ministers into any union upon the call even 
of their own representatives in National Council. 
Whether to ratify and join the union or refuse 
to do so would have to be left to every local 
church. Any church would be free to desert the 
advancing host. A strong minority might fall out 
and maintain the old body on the old ground. A 
majority even might hold back, discrediting the 
whole affair. It is impossible for us to deny 
that weakness in our organization. It is weak- 
ness for the purpose of church union, at least for 
any attempt at speedy union; for ours is the slow 
way of popular enlightenment and conviction. On 
the whole, however, we count it strength, and de- 
cline to alter our method. We never shall ad- 
vance in blind obedience to leaders. But we 
shall strengthen our internal bonds and acquire a 
firmer and more loyal coherence. Our corporate 
life will be more robust, pervasive and retentive. 
It will grow r more certain that, when an issue has 
finally been decided upon full deliberation, prac- 



Congregational Administration 

tically all of us will move together. Then, if 
obviously fitted to survive alone, fitter also shall 
we be to negotiate and unite. 

We need, in the third place, to understand and 
use certain important advantages which we enjoy 
Freedom an in th e department of polity. The 
Advantage world movement has been toward 

for Union r , j 1 j .1 

freedom and democracy, and there 
can be no return. Freedom, once possessed, is 
not surrendered. If lost, the battle will be 
fought out again, whatever waits. Union move- 
ments must crystallize near the points of greatest 
advance. Denominations which are free cannot 
return to unite with others which lie under 
authority; the latter must come forward. Herein 
we of the Congregational polity — Congrega- 
tionalists and others — lead the ecclesiastical 
world. We are the freest. It is not bigotry 
which forbids us to unite with any but the free ; 
it is the command of life itself. We may and 
must develop coherence, leadership and united 
action; but this, as we have seen, is not to fall 
back into fetters, but to advance out of individual- 
istic into organized democracy. 

Now this freedom of ours may at any moment 
block a particular negotiation for union. In the 
congregational- main, however, it gives us large ad- 
ism an ideal vantage. Human progress is bring- 
ing others forward. In this free land 
all the other polities have perforce developed 
their free elements. We sometimes say that Con- 

[168] 



Congregationalism and Church Union 

gregationalism is fitted to be the denominational 
solvent. That it cannot be just as it stands to- 
day. Other bodies have a compactness, solidity, 
esprit de corps, effective leadership, which will 
not be surrendered and are not incompatible with 
freedom. These we must acquire, while other 
bodies come forward to meet our freedom. Con- 
gregationalism is suited to advanced stages of 
life. It is, indeed, in its elementary practise, 
easy for new members, new churches, new fron- 
tiers, new missionary conditions. But for its best 
employment it requires good measures of popular 
intelligence, steadiness, self-control, initiative ; 
these firm-based upon inherited and renewed 
moral character imbued with the spirit of love 
and of Christ. What could we do in some hot 
hours of mob violence, when the Roman hier- 
archy has been able to quench the fury and folly 
of the hordes which dare not defy the throne? 
"Congregationalism," wrote Dr. Dale, "is an 
ideal polity. This is at once its reproach and its 
glory. The transcendent prerogatives and powers 
which it claims for the Church lie beyond the 
reach of communities which are not completely 
penetrated and transfigured by the Spirit of 
Christ. But as churches approach more nearly 
to the perfection to which Christ has called them, 
their authority becomes more and more august, 
and they enter more and more fully into the pos- 
session of the blessedness which is their inherit- 
ance in him." 

[169] 



Congregational Administration 

Close to this lies another advantage which we 
should use tirelessly. The hope of reaching 
union on church union, in the aggregate 
Local Fields leads through the local churches. 
True and lasting church union is no less than 
conformity of heart and character, separate de- 
nominations growing into likeness and love. It 
is labor lost for officials to arrange a formal 
union of bodies of churches which have not yet 
discovered one another and clasped hands. It 
has seemed to many that the federation move- 
ment was in far sounder youth in England and 
Wales than in our own land. Here, as was truly 
said at the outset, it has been federation at the 
top, the denominational leaders attempting 
through the national bodies to bring together the 
many corporations as if into a great ecclesiastical 
trust. The Free Church Council of England 
and Wales has been federation at the bottom. 
That movement has covered the whole land, from 
the Scotch border to Land's End — cities, vil- 
lages, hamlets, countrysides, with local councils, 
every church enlisted, denominational barriers 
lowered, no gaps left between parishes, every neg- 
lected home and every lost or laden soul sought 
out for ministry. You can predict the effect of 
such mighty causes. Can any denominational es- 
trangements or contentions withstand such 
gravity of love? Our federation at the top will 
never win and hold until from the officers' quar- 
ters it overruns the field. But if now the leaders 
[ 170] 



Congregationalism and Church Union 

of the thirty-three denominations whose names 
appear in the Federal Council can actually lead 
out their millions of members in federated action 
on the local fields, the day of real union will dawn. 
The advantages of separate divisions and 
machinery pertain mainly to leaders, central of- 
fices, large churches. The evils of sectarianism 
press hardest on the common people, small 
churches and their pastors in the meager fields, 
where the bills of fanaticism and local jealousies 
are paid in blood money. 

The way of wisdom, then, is exactly our Con- 
gregational way. We must labor for concrete 
union on local fields, and start The con&re- 
the cry up the line. Popular national way 
movements often burst suddenly into mighty 
power after a season of silent preparation. 
So the temperance movement now, amazing 
all but those who have guided the quiet work for 
years in church and school and home. So the 
direct primary movement in politics, which has 
run by its own inner force since i860 well-nigh 
over the land. Church union is now getting 
quiet seed-sowing in all quarters, in Sunday- 
school and home missionary work, in foreign 
missions, in new cooperation of agents, superin- 
tendents, pastors and churches, in brotherhoods 
and young people's movements, in more and 
more frequent organic union of churches; the 
summer growth will be short and swift, I be- 
lieve, and the harvest not far ahead. tye may 

[171] 



Congregational Administration 

awake any morning to a great popular uprising in 
church union, so commanding that denomina- 
tional lines will be scorned, and even the great 
polity lines be for a time as though they were not. 
I find it already said openly that even now "the old 
classification of church polities into the Episcopa- 
lian, the Presbyterian and the Congregational 
has ceased to be of practical moment." 

The most hopeful field, however, for union ef- 
fort seems to me to lie within each great polity, 
union in an d within the family groups. 
Family Here are found the points of least 
roups resistance and the lines of strong- 
est contact. A few more words from Dr. Car- 
roll will best reveal the possibilities. He says: 
"A closer scrutiny of the list [of our church 
bodies] shows that many of these one hundred 
and forty-three denominations differ only in 
name. Without a single change in doctrine or 
polity the seventeen Methodist bodies could be re- 
duced to three or four, the twelve Presbyterian to 
three, the twelve Mennonite to two, and so 
on. The differences in many cases are only sec- 
tional or historical. The slavery question was 
the cause of not a few divisions, and matters of 
discipline were responsible for a large number. 
Arranging the denominations in groups or fami- 
lies, and counting as one family each the twelve 
Mennonite, the seventeen Methodist, the thirteen 
Baptist bodies, and so on, we have, instead of one 
hundred and forty-three, only forty-two titles. 
[ 172] 



Congregationalism and Church Union 

In other words, if there could be a consolidation 
of each denominational group, the reproach of 
our division would be largely taken away." 

This family reunion is proceeding hopefully, 
as, for instance, in the return of the Cumberland 
Presbyterians to the northern Presbyterian body, 
the overtures between northern and southern 
Presbyterians, northern and southern Methodists, 
northern Methodists and Methodist Protestants, 
Baptists and Free Baptists. Similar action is in 
place between Congregationalists, Baptists, Dis- 
ciples and others. 

Within these families or groups what divisive 
forces still hold Christians apart? Dr. Carroll 
classifies the historic causes of division under four 
heads. 

i. "Controversies over doctrine;" 

2. "Controversies over administration or dis- 
cipline;" 

3. "Controversies over moral questions;" 

4. "Controversies of a personal character." 
Almost all of these have disappeared like the 

slavery question. Two or three more general 
forces, likely to hinder union at any time, may be 
mentioned. 

The first includes many standing disagree- 
ments, most of them upon non-essentials, some 
quite trivial; some in doctrine, standing 
some in administration, some not disagreements 
strictly in either field. Thus far the convictions 
of Baptists, and probably Disciples also, upon 
[173] 



Congregational Administration 

immersion form toward us such a barrier. Our 
doctrinal disagreements upon the person of 
Christ hold Unitarians and Congregationalists 
apart; this is not a minor disagreement, but its 
action is within polity and family precincts. The 
bishopric was one of the issues which created the 
Methodist Protestant body; it might still hinder 
their happy return to the parent church. 

A second seriously divisive force is the bunch 
of things called historic associations. Every 
Historic branch of the Church makes his- 

Associations tor y an( j i oves ft f merge with 

others seems disloyal to the fathers. Denomina- 
tional patriotism is exceeding strong in some 
quarters. It might be hard for some lineal Bap- 
tists to lie close with the children of those who 
stoned the prophets out of Massachusetts into 
Rhode Island. And the "Wee Frees/' both in 
Scotland and among Cumberland Presbyterians, 
are showing the stubbornness of tradition and the 
historic conscience, and are continuing to make 
fiercely separative history. Mason and Dixon's 
line has been almost a wall of fire between sec- 
tions of churches which broke apart on that 
awful issue. Such surcharged memories yield 
slowly to the grace of God. We have fathers 
and brethren among ourselves who shook mourn- 
ful heads over the proposed surrender of our Con- 
gregational name in the negotiations with United 
Brethren and Methodist Protestants. As to this 
name of ours, no minister who could get day's 

1 174 ] 



Congregationalism and Church Union 

wages for the time spent in uttering it would ever 
need a donation party or fall upon the tender mer- 
cies of relief funds. But it does have flocks of 
beautiful creatures lodging in the branches 
thereof. These three hundred years of ours are 
wonderful ; can any other loyal children think to 
match them? No one should be so disloyal as 
to be inconsiderate of others' attachments. 

There remains the divisive power of tempera- 
ment. After all light and heavy humor about it, 
temperament is a deep-running reality. Tempera- 
In church union discussions we use it in ment 
an ample sense. Good people differ in personal 
qualities, disposition, character, culture, manners, 
home life, social ways. It is not well to think, 
and it is worse to say, that some are better than 
others. For purposes of church dissension men 
may be better or worse; for purposes of church 
union they are merely dissimilar. Such differ- 
ences characterize neighborhoods, groups, organ- 
ized bodies, districts, denominations. Some 
people and groups are mutually congenial ; others, 
though respecting one another, lack affinities. It 
was freely said that we Congregationalists would 
not most naturally have sought United Brethren 
and Methodist Protestants, nor they us. They 
both belong rather in the Methodist group. Many 
opposed the union on this score. We should 
find our own kind more numerous, it was thought, 
among Presbyterians; similar psychological ele- 
ments and unities, similar grades of cultivation, 

[175] 



Congregational Administration 

similar historic extractions and developments, 
similar social manners and customs and resources. 
It seems to many that we have drifted farther 
from Baptists and others in our administrative 
group than from the Presbyterian family. 

Such divisive forces I desired to introduce into 
our line of thought, but not to discuss with any 
Brotherhood fulness. What shall we think of 
Mightier them with respect to the duty of 
church union? It seems clear to me that they 
should not be permitted to block any actual at- 
tempt whatever at union. Among all Christian 
communions on earth the uniting power of 
brotherhood ought to be mightier than all com- 
binations of divisive forces. It is not so yet; 
and who will cast the first stone? My convic- 
tion is this, that, when any two Christian bodies 
have been moved of God toward compounding 
their differences, have met, have found them- 
selves hopefully near to union on the graver 
issues of doctrine and property and polity, it is 
grief and shame to suffer the union to fail on 
these minor counts. The scandal of disunion, 
the beauty of union, the primacy of love, the 
word of the Master, each and all are too 
sovereign and august to be overborne by per- 
sonal pettiness. Temperament? "One is your 
Master, and all ye are brethren." Our Church, 
with its glorious history and matchless name? 
"God so loved the world. " Our preferences? 
"Hereby know we love, because he laid down 

[i 7 6] 



Congregationalism and Church Union 

his life for us: and we ought to lay down our 
lives for the brethren." The duty of church 
union is red, blood-red. 

The union of churches is chiefly a means to- 
ward the reunion of Christendom. But what 
really is this greater end? It is Reunion of 

Said that, if We COUld Once get tO- Christendom 

gether in one all-inclusive organization, we 
should inevitably break up again ; the bulk would 
be too enormous and clumsy to move. The 
reply is that then we might properly divide. We 
should have established the primacy of union in 
the conscience of the Christian world. We 
should have bowed together under the scepter of 
love. The trouble is not that United Brethren, 
Methodist Protestants and Congregationalists 
are living and working in three separate organ- 
izations; the trouble is that they have declined 
to unite. That, not actually working divisions, 
is the scandal of Christendom. We could 
justify church divisions made upon convenience, 
temperamental affiliations, or preference for cer- 
tain forms of worship or administration, pro- 
vided that the separate bodies never preyed upon 
one another, always cooperated, in honor pre- 
ferred one another, and sprang together with a 
loyal shout wherever essential unity was seriously 
questioned. The profound issue of unity once 
made supreme in the heart of the Christian world 
and sovereign in its practise, agreeable and prac- 
tical measures of diversity promote health and 

1*77] 



Congregational Administration 

efficiency. The second great commandment does 
not forbid us to select our church relations, along 
with our social associations, among our affinities 
and conveniences. Ideas rule, not forms and 
physical arrangements. The question is not, Are 
the churches of Christ divided into separate ad- 
ministrative bodies? not, How many separate 
bodies? but, What does it mean? Why do 
they remain apart? Why do they permit the 
wrongs and woes of division to flourish? So 
long as the answer is that they are not willing to 
unite, that they prefer to tolerate the wrongs and 
woes, that they even prefer to flourish themselves 
upon those wrongs and woes, so long must the 
duty of church union stand paramount. Not 
until the answer may be that the evils of division 
are at an end, that the churches are heartily ready 
to unite, that existing divisions express quite 
minor choices of practical convenience and per- 
sonal preference, that all such choices are held 
subject to constraints of fellowship, — not until 
essential unity has thus embodied its victory all 
round the world, can church union halt or falter. 
But in order to compass such unity how far 
must church union be carried? Who knows? 
Limits of Not, I believe, so far as to a single 

church union all-embracing organization ; per- 
haps not so far as that in any Christian country. 
But just so far, though it be unto a single organi- 
zation and the ends of the earth, as may be neces- 
sary to unite the whole Christian world in un- 

[178] 



Congregationalism and Church Union 

doubting and unfailing brotherhood. The or- 
ganic union of Christian denominations must be 
fostered. Cooperation is not sufficient. Federa- 
tion is not sufficient. The best Christian con- 
science condemns the one hundred and forty- 
three denominations and their attempted vindica- 
tions. The future must decide where a halt in 
the union movement may be made. 



[ *79 J 



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